Allow users to declutter their Apple Watch home screen
My Apple Watch home screen is cluttered with apps I hardly ever use. These apps fall in a few different categories: apps I can't delete, apps I rarely use & apps with auto-functionality that I'd lose by deleting. I think the problems associated with each could be solved by allowing a way to hide apps from the home screen.
I want my home screen to have only the 3 or 4 apps I use many times each day. The rest should be deletable or sequestered away. The watch screen is tiny enough as is (I even have the Ultra). I don't want to squint and fat-finger/misclick; I want easy.
There's one set of apps I am simply not allowed to delete (no "x" appears alongside these apps when trying to delete):
- App Store
- Calculator
- Apple Music
- Maps
- Settings
- iMessage
- etc.
I have no interest in using any of these apps on my watch. But the system won't allow me to delete them. Or at least relocate them so they're not hogging the valuable, tiny screen real estate from the handful of apps I actually care about. Perhaps the design of WatchOS means these apps are fundamentally necessary, but at least allow me to hide them somehow.
There's another set of apps that I find useful, but rarely use. There's no way for me to re-organize or hide them from taking up the screen space that I'd like to be dedicated solely to the few apps I use every day.
- Find Devices
- Camera Remote
- Find Items
Finally, there are a few apps whose functionality I like, but I never need/want to be able to open directly. Deleting them would remove their commonly auto or button activated functionality.
- Tides (auto-activates water mode when the watch is submerged among other things)
- Siren (plays the loud sound activated by the siren button)
- Noise (detects when noise-levels are high)
Apple Watch Ultra