Using search to launch apps

In my first post on iPhone 3.0 shortcuts, I mentioned that when you are on the search screen (which is to the left of your first home page of app icons), you can easily find and launch an app just by typing the first letter or two of its name.  I also mentioned that this shortcut works even faster if you change the search sort order so that apps come up first in the list when you do a search.  For example, if I want to launch a Twitter client, I can just type tw and I see Twitterific (my current favorite) and TwitterFon:

Friday night, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue posted an interesting tip to his Twitter stream:  because of the search-to-launch-apps shortcut, you can actually install unlimited apps on the iPhone.  iPhone Software 3.0 only has 11 screens to hold apps (up from 9 in 2.x), and with 16 apps per screen plus the four on the bottom of every screen, your iPhone can display icons for 180 different apps.  But David figured out that you can keep adding more apps then that—he got up to around 250—and even though you won't see those extra apps on any of the 11 pages of your home screen, you can still launch those hidden apps by using the search-to-launch-apps shortcut.  Just start to type the name of the app and the iPhone will let you launch apps that are not shown on a home page.

I doubt that many of you have over 180 apps on your iPhone, but David's tip underscored for me of the power of the search-to-launch-apps shortcut.  I keep the apps that I use the most either on the bottom row or on one of my first two or three pages, but for any app that I have on page 4 or later, I find that it is much faster to launch the app from the search screen then to scroll all the way over to the app and then have to scroll back to the first home page screen after I am done with the app. 

No matter how many apps you have on your iPhone, if you haven't started using the search-to-launch-apps shortcut, give it a try for a few days.  You just may find that you like the shortcut as much as I do.

Comments

[Charles Jannace]

call me old fashioned but I like my icons and touch screen access to my apps.

[GB]

Let's say you have 7 or 9 or 11 screens of apps. Is there a better way to organize the icons then trying to drag them around from screen to screen?

[Jeff responds: Unfortunately, no. And you are not the only one to request such a feature. It would be nice if Apple gave you some ability in iTunes to manage your home screen icons.]

[bob sherman]

one better solution that does make it a bit easier to move apps is to move the 4 apps in the dock to the last page and then use the dock to move 4 apps at a time from page to page