Unlock Productivity: Anthony’s Guide to Mastering Focus Modes on Your Home Screen

Since I’ve asked my colleagues to share their deepest secrets home screens, I might as well set an example. I’m not sure my home screen is the most fascinating of all, as I primarily use my iPhone 16 Pro for checking emails, reading a few RSS feeds, listening to podcasts, and enhancing my language lessons. My phone is neither a gaming console, a mini-TV, nor a black hole for doomscrolling. You’ll excuse the phrase, but my iPhone’s home screen is bland.

That’s intentional! I’ve never installed many apps, I enable even fewer notifications, and I use simple wallpapers to decrease my phone’s appeal. Since I’ve left major social networks years ago and use the “Do Not Disturb” mode liberally, I have no reason to stare at my screen all day. I even used Dumbify, and continue to use Niagara Launcher on Android, to replace the colorful icon grid with a list of monochrome titles.

Recently, I shifted back to a more conventional arrangement by leveraging focus modes. During the day, my home screen displays my favorite apps, organized alphabetically:

• Antidote: unfortunately, it can’t correct texts on iOS and iPadOS, while others use custom keyboards to do so, but it remains my go-to dictionary, which I consult almost daily;
• Calendar: I believe I’ve tried every calendar app available in the App Store, but I always come back to the built-in app. Now that it shows reminders, I was able to uninstall Things and free up some space on my home screen;

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• Duolingo: I used Busuu to refresh my Spanish, my native language that I don’t practice enough, I use Duolingo to bolster my Portuguese lessons, a language that reminds me of my grandparents’ Galician, and I plan to use it to revisit German, a language I studied for nine years but still eludes me at the worst times;
• Home Assistant: I’ve completely abandoned the HomeKit ecosystem since I installed the Home Assistant Green box and I don’t regret it for a second. I would have given up on home automation, and perhaps more, without Home Assistant;
• Le Monde: because it’s important to stay vaguely informed about general news, even though it’s depressing, and even though the few articles from the “newspaper of record” daring to tackle technology topics are riddled with inaccuracies;
• Libro.fm: instead of half-listening to podcasts, I try to listen attentively to audiobooks. The Libro.fm catalog is as good as Audible’s, but the files are DRM-free, so they can be listened to on any device and saved like all my other files;
• Mail: I believe I’ve tried every mail app available in the App Store, but I always return to the built-in app. However, the new interface might make me reconsider. I use Mail only for my personal inbox, while I check my work inbox through Fastmail’s web interface;
• Maps: I like getting lost, so I use Maps;
• Marvis: an app we talk too little about, which puts the Apple Music library in a fully customizable interface and can send playback data to Last.fm. In a completely different style, I really like Albums, but the cost of its subscription seems a bit steep, despite its extremely detailed discovery features;
• Notion: I won’t tell you that I could write a book on Notion, because you might actually ask me to do it. I mainly use it to catalog my library, like a simplified version of Koha, and track my reading, like a personal version of Goodreads. I’m slowly starting to use it to manage my finances, organize my university lectures, and document my freelance activity, but I’m always concerned about the proprietary data format and lack of courage to reinstall Obsidian;
• Oura: why wear a smartwatch when you can wear a connected ring and a mechanical watch;
• Photos: I believe I’ve tried every photo cataloging app available in the App Store, but I always come back to the built-in app. I use Photomator to “develop” my shots, taken in RAW Max format, with a custom LUT that evokes Kodak Portra 400 film;
• Podcasts: I believe I’ve tried every podcast player available in the App Store, but I always return to the built-in app. (You see the theme?) I no longer listen to enough podcasts to justify keeping Pocket Casts or Overcast—I don’t even record my own anymore—but I’m not yet ready to remove Podcasts;
• Reeder: because it’s important to stay precisely informed about news in our field, even though Reeder also includes my personal monitoring. I really like the approach of the new version, which no longer focuses on the number of articles to read, but just syncs the position in the feed. Add a few YouTube channels, some podcasts, some subreddits, and some Mastodon accounts, and you have your own personal little social network;
• Transit: probably the best navigation app with public transport, which has never let me down. I sometimes use Geovelo to plan my bike routes, but the proliferation of bike lanes in the Lyon metropolis makes journeys safer;
• Waterminder: an app to ensure I drink enough water. We all have our issues.

The Foreca widget shifts the grid downwards to make thumb manipulation easier, but primarily provides the most reliable weather forecasts I know of, for a negligible cost. Hello Weather allows for switching data providers on the fly and offers a highly interesting dynamic interface, but its widgets are less polished.

When “Do Not Disturb” mode is on, in the evenings and on weekends, my home screen is simply empty, achieving ultimate minimalism. Lastly, I’ve created a “Travel” mode to automatically activate a home screen that highlights mapping apps (Organic Maps and WorkOutDoors), ticketing apps (Cards, Trainline), and translation apps. In all cases, the Dock contains the same four apps:

• a mystery app: developed by a friend, it has become so indispensable that it made me fill my Dock, although I prefer a three-icon layout;
• Messages: my friends use Messages, people who use WhatsApp are not my friends;
• Phone: because the iPhone can also make calls, you know, and because this app includes the features of the Contacts and FaceTime apps;
• Safari: against my better judgment, and only with the help of the content blocker 1Blocker, the customization extension StopTheMadnessPro, and the Kagi search engine.

If my home screen changes based on the focus mode, the lock screen and Control Center do not change. The lock screen features widgets from Foreca, Duolingo, and Waterminder. I haven’t found anything better than the shortcuts to toggle the flashlight and launch the camera, so the same icons appear in the same places in the Control Center, which is all the more a permanent construction site since its arrangement is regularly shuffled by a bug that has been lingering since the first betas of iOS 18.

My iPad is set up much like my Mac. However, I haven’t used the Desktop since 2007, so nothing but the wallpaper appears under my windows, usually the same as on my iPhone. Therefore, my iPad’s home screen is empty, except for the Dock, almost identical to that of my Mac (missing BBEdit and Ulysses) and similar to my iPhone’s home screen (with GoodLinks). This leads me to think that without the podcast editor Ferrite and the drawing app Procreate, I wouldn’t use an iPad at all. The home screen says it all.