It’s been a little while since I published my home screens. But after seeing my buddy Josh Ginter publish his, I thought I’d share what my current iPhone Home Screen is like these days. It’s undergone quite a lot of changes over the past month or two — at least by my standards.
I’m using an iPhone 11 Pro with the linen wallpaper and the following apps on my Home Screen:
- Messages
- Fantastical — I’ve tried a lot of calendar apps, Fantastical is the best.
- Jetpack — a shortcut that launches a modal view of site stats in the WordPress app.
- Camera
- Headspace — an excellent meditation and mindfulness app. Full disclosure, Automattic allows me to expense the costs of the subscription.
- Ulysses — my favorite writing app on the platform. Everything I publish on Initial Charge starts in this app.
- LookUp — I don’t think most people have a dictionary app on their Home Screen anymore — Siri does a lot of that work for many, I suspect. But I still prefer a dedicated app for looking up definitions and LookUp is the best one I’ve found.
- Simplenote — I do support for Simplenote at Automattic and I may or may not be running a beta version with a different icon. I use this to store all of my work-related notes.
- Things — there’s no to do list application that has ever clicked for me like Things has.
- Reeder — I use this app to follow a single RSS feed — the one generated by Shaarli. I have it configured to only mark items as read manually. It syncs read status over iCloud and acts as an excellent read later client.
- Day One — the best journaling app on the market. I use it to save thoughts, long term storage of my bests photos — with context — and to generally document my life.
- P2s — this is a custom icon for ReadKit, setup through Launch Center Pro. I use it to read P2s, the internal weblogs that we use at Automattic for company-, team-, and division-wide communication and documentation.
- Edit — a simple, in a good way, text editor by Kyle Dreger.
- Photos
- Balance — a shortcut that combines all of my finance-related apps into a single launcher. Like a folder, but with a nifty icon.
- Bear — my personal notes app. I’m actively looking for alternatives at the moment — ideally, I’ll find something that’s self-hosted or works with markdown files on an FTP server.
- Clock
- Calzy — I go back and forth between this and Calcbot. I’m in a Calzy-type of mood at the moment.
- Spark — I’ve spent far too much time switching between email clients. None of them do everything I want in exactly the way I want it to. But Spark comes the closest.
- Prism — I’m not much for streaming audio services. I like owning my audio files. Prism, combined with Plex is the perfect setup for me.
- Unread — my favorite RSS application. It’s the best for reading feeds. I use Tiny Tiny RSS as the backend service with the Fever API.
- Icro — with my newfound adoration for Micro.blog, it’s only natural for me to have a client app in my dock. I’m cycling through the options now to see what one is the best.
- Safari
- Overcast — I’ve been getting the itch to try out other podcast clients lately. But I sort-of expect I’ll come back to Overcast when I’m done. It’s solid.
- Pandora — I use the service for their excellent customized radio stations. I have a 90s Alternative station that has been meticulously tuned for years.
- Maps
- 1Password — the best password manager available.
- iTunes Store — I default to purchasing CDs, but when I buy digital, I use iTunes. I also launch the app regularly to look up artists and albums for the previews.
- Screens — I use this to manage our Mac Mini home server and to help out my mother-in-law with tech support.
- TestFlight
- Find My
- Code Editor — I wrote Initial Charge’s WordPress theme on my iPhone and iPad, all in Code Editor. It’s also invaluable for managing files on my web server over FTP.
- Shortcuts
- Airport — a nifty app that allows you to discover joinable TestFlight betas.
- App Store
- WordPress — another app that I do support for at Automattic. I use it for work as well as publishing on a few private family sites.
- Prologue — from the developer of Prism, Prologue is an audiobook app that syncs with Plex.
- Settings
I’m hoping to start publishing these more regularly again. I really enjoy sharing my home screens and reading about others’ too. Perhaps doing one device at a time is the best way to lower the barrier to entry.
