What I’ve learned by using iOS focus modes to their full potential

A few months ago, I decided to become an iOS power user. That meant setting up custom icons and focus modes to try and get the most out of my phone’s features. Three months later, I can say that I’ve learned a lot, and sometimes, less is more.

What I did

A few months ago, I saw a post by a creator named Lokki showing off his custom visionOS-inspired iOS icons. I decided to download them, and during that process, I also decided it would be a good idea to set up some Focus modes to help tune my home screen to my evolving needs throughout the day.

If you don’t remember what Focus modes are they’re Apple’s expanded Do Not Disturb controls that allow you to tailor your notification and home screen preferences to different events. For instance, I have separate Focus modes for ‘Work,’ ‘Sleep,’ ‘Gaming,’ ‘Fitness,’ ‘Do Not Disturb,’ and ‘After Work.’

Work Focus mode on the left, After Work on the right.

I also took this to its extremes by setting up a different two-panel home screen for each Focus. This means that on my main work page, I have 16 apps, and then on the next panel, I have an agenda and Reminders widget. In the After Work mode, I have a different array of 16 apps, and then on the second page, I have a now playing widget, a weather widget and a handful of games and leisure apps. This two-page design repeats for all of my modes, with the second page adding in more variance depending on the time of day.

I thought it would be smart to have my main home screen evolve throughout the day to reflect the apps I use the most during those times, but in reality, I find it confusing and annoying to constantly fight my muscle memory. Thus, I ended up using app search a lot more, which defeats the point of the tailor-made home screen layout.

It was also a huge pain to set up. To apply a home screen to a focus mode you need to have it visible on your phone when no focus modes are applied. That means since I have six focus modes I have 12 home screen pages, with two pages per focus mode. In theory, I could have probably used the same home screen for After Work and Gaming, but like I said, I was trying to get the most out of it.

I’ll also note that having to make multiple app shortcuts to make my custom app icons appear across various home screens was also annoying, and now, when I search for things like Twitter, I get four apps instead of just one.

What am I going to do instead?

I’m scaling way back. I think I’m going back to two Focus modes: one for work and one for everything else. Plus, both modes will share the same primary home screen, so I can get used to one main app layout.

Then, depending on the focus mode, I’ll have a different second screen. For work, that means I’ll keep my big agenda widget on the second page, but then after work, it will shrink into the smaller calendar widget and showcase more apps that I use in the evenings, like Delta and IMDB.

I used to have a Sleep Focus, but thankfully, watchOS 11 and iOS 18 no longer need your Sleep Focus enabled to track overnight rests or naps, so I’m going to be cutting that one soon, too.

How does this get better?

I want my phone to be smart enough to know what apps I’m looking for before I look for them, but I think as we’ve seen on Android, that’s mostly a pipe dream. Humans are too unpredictable, and in the end, we’re also creatures of habit.

Perhaps Apple Intelligence will make this better, but I still think that setting a main home screen and getting used to it is the best move. Relying on Siri Shortcuts Widgets can help achieve some of this, and in my testing, it has been moderately ok at guessing what I want when I want it.