Need help with customizing your iPad dock or organizing your most used apps?
Today’s Tip:
You may have noticed that the dock full of apps, located at the bottom of your iPad screen, is filled with apps you don’t regularly use, or ones you don’t want to always have at the ready. Learning how to customize your dock to make apps you do like to use easier to access, and how to organize your apps on the home screen, will help you save time, as well as keep your iPad experience as orderly as possible. This customization will also help individuals who have limitations in fine motor skills or those who experience pain with excessive movement.
Your iPad dock consists of two parts. The left side of the dock can be organized. You can move apps by holding down on them and then sliding them to another part of the dock. You can also remove apps by holding down on them and sliding them out of the dock. If you want to add an app that you use frequently to the left side of the dock, find it in the home screen and drag it down into the dock. Once you like the placement, just tap anywhere on the home screen to get it to stay.
The right side of the dock changes automatically based on the apps you use frequently. You can still move apps out of this side by holding down on them and either pulling them out of the dock or clicking on the minus sign when they are wiggling (the wiggling apps are how you know you are customizing). Because these apps change frequently, you may only need to remove apps if you are going to share your screen with a public audience.
You can also organize the apps on your home screen by holding down on them and dropping them on top of each other to create a folder. This is handy when you want to keep all apps of a certain kind together. For example, you may want to have all your note taking apps in one folder. Hold down on the first app you want to move, and then place it on top of another app to get the folder to open. Your iPad will automatically name the folder based on what kind of apps you put together (in this example, it may label it ‘Productivity’ because of the note apps), but you can always change the title later by holding down on the folder and tapping the title.
And finally, if you’ve downloaded too many apps or are just looking to clean up your home screen, you can erase any app by holding down on it and tapping on ‘Remove App’.
Video Tutorial:
A brief video tutorial about Customizing the iPad Dock and Organizing Apps (run time: 4:27) has been created to help you through the process.
Additional Support:
You may also find this article from Apple helpful:
