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iOS 13 is great, but when will Apple finally allow users to freely move icons on the iPhone home screen?

By Victor Hristov

Published: Jun 10, 2019, 8:07 AM

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This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.

Apple's latest iOS 13 is the holy grail of updates that iPhone power users have been asking for years: the latest update brings users the freedom to have a pretty much full-fledged file manager on an iPhone, it even has a downloads manager in the browser, things that we thought we would never see on iOS. Apple has also finally fixed the volume HUD that used to appear right in the center, blocking what you were viewing, and it's now changed to a much more discreet volume bar that appears on the side of the screen.

So... Apple, can we finally freely move the icons on our home screen now?

We are referring to the fact that while you can rearrange icons on your iPhone home screen, they snap to the fixed top-to-bottom grid and you cannot leave empty spaces or just place a few icons at the bottom of the screen without having anything at the top. And that can be just maddening. If you are like me and want to have a clean home screen with just a few icons on it, you want those icons to be at the bottom of the screen where you can easily reach them with your finger, so you don't need to stretch all the way up to the top of the phone. And this really seems like the simplest of features that every Android phone has had for years now.

Hey, Steve686 from 2014! It's 2019 and you still cannot move icons on an iPhone

Apple, however, stubbornly refuses to change this one simple setting.

It's 2019 and you still cannot freely move icons on iPhones.

How frustrating is that? For many users, it is very frustrating. A quick Google search would quickly surface dozens of forum threads dating back years ago with expletives over the inability to freely arrange icons on iPhones.

iPhones do not allow users to freely arrange apps

But what is the logic behind this? Why does Apple restrict iPhone users this way? Simple: snapping apps to a grid as iOS has done helps avoid a messy home screen. Snapping to a grid means that there will be no empty spaces on the screen and everything will look equally spaced. Plus, knowing that you cannot do much with icon management, means you will not fall in a trap of customization for customization sake. I understand, there is merit to this argument, but would it really be so hard for Apple to provide an OPTION to those who want it, so those users can take control of their own home screen? I would not even mind if Apple hides this option somewhere in Accessibility Settings, away from the average user so as not to confuse them, same as it has done with Automatic Brightness controls.

Apple is obviously changing its walled-garden philosophy and iOS 13 is a prime example. After all, for many people their phone has already become their main and often only computer, and allowing it to do more in a more open way makes sense. So we do hope that one day we will be able to freely move icons on iPhones. We just hope this day and this simplest of changes comes sooner rather than later.

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Victor, a seasoned mobile technology expert, has spent over a decade at PhoneArena, exploring the depths of mobile photography and reviewing hundreds of smartphones across Android and iOS ecosystems. His passion for technology, coupled with his extensive knowledge of smartphone cameras and battery life, has positioned him as a leading voice in the mobile tech industry.