Organising Home Screen apps with VoiceOver on iPhone and iPad

Why should you organise Home Screen apps?

Many blind and low vision users open apps using Siri or perhaps using spotlight search but sometimes it may be more convenient to locate an app on the home screen to open it; you might have forgotten its name, for example. If you have several home screen pages of apps it can be quite difficult to remember where a specific app is located. Organising your Home Screen apps can make it much easier to locate apps. You could consider two approaches, possibly in combination. One approach is to group apps with similar functions on individual Home screen pages. The other approach, which is probably the simpler of the two, is to create folders in which to group similar apps. You might group together social networking apps, entertainment apps, games, banking apps and so on. Apps can be organised by dragging them around when the Home Screen is in its jiggling, edit, mode by low vision users. I don't recommend this to low vision users since it is tricky to drag apps between Home Screens and it's very easy to drop apps in the wrong place and lose them. It's much safer to use VoiceOver when organising apps and you only need very minimal VoiceOver skills. What follows is meant to describe the process for anyone, even if you aren't a VoiceOver user at present.

VoiceOver users - before you begin

Touch an app on your Home Screen and swipe up with one finger. If you hear "edit mode" you can ignore the rest of this section and skip to the next heading. If you heard "activate, default" then you, or possibly a trainer, have turned off a setting that allows you to edit Home screen apps this way. It is sometimes turned off because some learners enter edit mode accidentally with unintentional swipes and this can be confusing. If the sswitch is turned off you have two choices.  You can go to Settings / Accessibility / VoiceOver / Rotor actions and turn on the Edit Apps on Home Screen switch. Alternatively,you could leave the switch as it is and  instead of swiping up with one finger to begin editing apps as instructed below, you can touch a Home Screen app and then double tap and hold, that is leave your finger resting on the screen. You may hear some sounds and when you hear "started editing" lift your finger. The rotor actions switch has no effect on the remaining instructions on this page, just the initial method of  starting editing.

Organising Home Screen apps using VoiceOver

You will need to use the following VoiceOver gestures.

Double tap: this is a rapid double tap with one finger somewhere near the middle of the screen. The precise location isn't important.

Swipe up: this is a quick flick upwards with one finger near the middle of the screen.

Three finger swipe right or left: this is a flick right or left with 3 fingers near the centre of the screen.

If VoiceOver isn't already turned on, instruct Siri to turn on VoiceOver.

Go to the Home Screen by clicking the Home button if your phone or tablet has one. If your device has no Home button slide a finger up from the very bottom of the screen until you hear the second of two beeps and then lift your finger off the screen.

If you wish, practice the three finger swipe left and right gestures which move through your Home screen pages as a swipe with a single finger would with VoiceOver off. Note that the three finger swipe will work only if VoiceOver has spoken the name of an app in the main part of the screen. It won't work if VoiceOver has spoken the name of an app in the dock at the bottom of the screen.

Now you are ready to do one of:

• reposition an app or folder

• create a new folder with two apps

• add an app to an existing folder

how to move an app or folder

Let's assume you want to move an app called x to a position before an app called y. The process is identical for moving a folder called x.

Touch or otherwise locate x and hear its name spoken by VoiceOver.

Swipe up and you will hear "edit mode".

Double tap to begin editing; you will hear "started editing".

Swipe up repeatedly until you hear "drag x".

Double tap to begin the drag.

You don't actually drag the app using VoiceOver; all you need do is locate y and drop x before it. Here's how:

You may first need to use three finger swipes left or right to move to the page containing y. When VoiceOver first lands on a new page it will probably speak "add widget, button". If you need to move to another page touch any app in the main part of the screen to hear its name spoken and then perform the three finger swipe.

Locate y and hear its name spoken. Swipe up repeatedly with one finger until you hear "drop x before y" and then double tap to drop x in this new position.

Sometimes you will be offered drops both before and after y; at other times only one will be available and you may need to make your desired move in multiple steps. 

How to create a new folder with two apps

New folders are created by a very similar process. The only difference is in the final stage. When you have located y, swipe up until you hear "create new folder with x and y" and then double tap to create the new folder.

The folder will be given a name appropriate for the apps it contains.  This name may be changed if you wish, but if you aren't familiar with VoiceOver this won't be easy. 

How to add an app to an existing folder

Let's assume you want to move an app called x to a folder called z.

Start dragging x as before. This time locate the folder into which you want to drop x. Swipe up repeatedly until you hear add x to folder z" and then double tap to complete the operation.

 And, of course, if you wish, instruct Siri to turn VoiceOver off when you have finished.

iOS 18 makes it possible to arrange home screen icons more flexibly so that they need not be positioned side by side and gaps can be left between icons on screens which aren't already full. To do this, start editing and then touch an app to select it and then double tap and hold. You can then drag the app to any vacant location of your choice which will be described as a row and column number. Be careful, though, it's a little too easy to drag items to the wrong location.

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