Homescreen.is

If you want to see what mobile apps are the most popular, you can do a number of things.

You can look at the mobile apps that have the most downloads by checking out the leaderboards in the iOS and Android app stores. They will differ from country to country. You can use a service like AppAnnie to help you do this kind of work.

You can try to figure out what apps have the most MAUs and DAUs. That is a lot harder. There are some services out there that attempt to do that. comScore’s Mobile Metrix will give you that data. It’s a paid service so not everyone can afford it. Full disclosure, I used to be on comScore’s board and still own stock in the company.

Another interesting metric is homescreen real estate. Being on a user’s homescreen will tell you something about the loyalty the user has to the app and it is most likely correlated to MAUs and DAUs (why would you have an app on your homescreen that you don’t use regularly?).

I’ve been pretty obsessed with homescreen real estate and have posted my homescreen here on AVC a number of times. My homescreen moves around a lot, particularly when I’m traveling and need certain apps more than others. For example, the Delta and Uber apps are on my homescreen while I’m in europe because I’m using both frequently while I’m over here.

My friend John Borthwick is also obsessed about homescreen real estate and he and his colleagues at Betaworks have built a service to aggregate homescreens and then create a data service around them. The service is called homescreen.is and it’s pretty simple. If you have an iPhone, you download the app, you take a screenshot of your homescreen, and you upload it to homescreen.is via the mobile app.

Each user has a profile on the site with their current homescreen on it. Here is mine. There is a leaderboard, of course, which is here. And you can see some interesting things, like the top homescreen apps of people who follow someone on Twitter. Here’s that data for me. It turns out the top homescreen apps of my followers on Twitter is not much different from the top homescreen apps for all homescreen users.

Right now, this data is heavily skewed to the geek/tech insider crowd. You can see that in the data. 1Password, Pocket, and Overcast are top apps on Homescreen.is. They are not top 100 apps, maybe not even top 250 apps. But they are very popular in the same crowd that is using Homescreen right now.

Can Homescreen go viral and get mass adoption such that its data will be more mainstream? Maybe. Sharing homescreens seems like something everyone would want to do. Making Homescreen.is fun, engaging, and viral seems like the thing they need to do to get the app on everyone’s phones. An android version would be good too.

In the long run, Homescreen.is could be a great tool for discovery. The mobile app ecosystem could use some help with that.

#mobile

Comments (Archived):

  1. Barry Nolan

    Hands down, the most natural and delightful app discovery tool Iโ€™ve every used. Little wonder Twitter is responding by tracking which apps you have you on your phone.With cost per install ishovering around $1.50, and discovery pre-pagerank, theyโ€™ve a phenomenal opportunity in front of them.

    1. Richard

      Where’s the 1.50 from?

      1. Barry Nolan

        Fiksu. Talking with devs, it’s often a lot higher

  2. Jan Schultink

    Thinking back to the days around 2000 when all the discussion was around the browser home page, sticky eye balls, and portals.

    1. ChuckEats

      yep – i’d bet 50% of iphone users don’t even know how to move their apps to the front page. and of the 50% that do, 25% don’t care.

  3. jason wright

    “An android version would be good too” – understatement.the ‘over my shoulder’ concern means i don’t necessarily want some of my most used apps in view on my home screen (banking and bitcoin apps come to mind).

    1. Leapy

      Same with my banking, Google Drive and Dropbox icons – keep them off the homepage where little fingers can have a LOOOT of fun. ๐Ÿ™‚

  4. David Semeria

    I’m very surprised there is no Skype on your community screen.

    1. fredwilson

      I don’t Skype and haven’t in a few years. I use google hangouts and would like to use FaceTime but haven’t yet

      1. Geoff

        Facetime is excellent although on one of my foreign SIM’s I was charged for a text message when initiating a Facetime call

      2. JamesHRH

        Any idea why Skype faded? Seems like a backbone service.I’ll FaceTime with you to get you off the Schneid! #earlyapplefanboyoffer

        1. fredwilson

          Quality degrades over time. App is clunky. Doesn’t run in the browser. Not natively mobile. I could go on and on but those are enough to close the coffin

  5. awaldstein

    Can I search by category? Then it gets super useful and by default a ranking service.

  6. LIAD

    gave up making my homescreen pretty ages ago.arranging the icons across multiple screens is a huge pain in the ass.i typically just swipe down and use spotlight to find the app by typing first 2 letters.would be more interested seeing app-open-count data rather than just homescreen real estate

    1. Geoff

      Totally agree about search and about count data

    2. fredwilson

      Hmm. I wonder how many users do what you do?I generally use notifications to drive app opens but that doesn’t work as well on iOS

      1. pointsnfigures

        (iOS) I group them into categories, but if I can’t remember where something is I use the swipe down method. App-open count data is important because I have apps I don’t use regularly, but don’t delete either.

      2. Richard

        A guess is 66% of users. Look at the leadership board and you will see twitter is on just 33% of homescreens. We know (in this sample) that twitter is on everyone’s phone.This also tells me that the app itself needs a pivot. It’s like asking people to empty one of their pockets and making a statement about who still carries $.

        1. fijiaaron

          No way, it’s more like 1%. Most people don’t even know about that feature. And the rest don’t want to type.

      3. Ben Novakovic

        I also just search – I find it generally faster, and scales endlessly ๐Ÿ™‚

      4. Steve Poland

        Swipe down in iOS FTW. Scales endlessly like someone said, because I can’t find new apps I install.

      5. Adam Benayoun

        I’m the same – I don’t bother looking for the icon app anymore – I just try to search for the app.

      6. bmathes

        I still don’t understand how people function with notifications on. I’ve never had an executive assistant, but one that walked in on me every 10-15 minutes no matter what I was doing to tell me someone liked a photo of mine on facebook would get fired really, really quickly.

        1. fredwilson

          I don’t set them to vibrate. They pile up and I use them as my to do list and navigation on mobile

          1. Susan Rubinsky

            I use them the same way.

          2. bmathes

            That’s a great idea. WIll try it.

        2. bsoist

          I’ve found that a little effort fiddling with notification settings – esp tweaking which apps should make noise – makes a big difference.

      7. LE

        Hmm. I wonder how many users do what you do?Probably roughly correlates with how people keep their offices or houses the amount of discipline they put toward that type of thing.I’m with Liad I don’t have any patience or interest to do that type of thing. And my office is all over the place with all sorts of things going on to make my point. Same with our bedroom at home and for that matter the rest of the house. It gets straightened up the day before the cleaning lady arrives. When I moved my old office I didn’t throw things out I moved 80% into storage. Much less stressful. (A great idea and I highly recommend it storage is cheap stress to decide what to keep is high).Back in the day, one of my mentors (if you want to call him that he really was just an older guy who had done well for himself) used to have an office that was impeccible. No paper literally anywhere. I asked him what’s up with that (my Dad’s office as a kid was super messy..)He told me his attitude was “if I don’t have a need for it today I don’t keep it” or something like that. He was very minimalist.The thing is though he wasn’t super curious. And he would always be coming to me for answers to questions that he had and always wanted to get together to discuss some issue and get my thoughts. I tied it in to that lack of curiosity and discipline that allowed him to have no paper on his desk. He was only living in the moment and if something didn’t have value right then he disposed of it.

      8. LIAD

        Seems quite a few

      9. bsoist

        I’m sure it’s a lot. Most people I know do it that way. I DO put some effort into my main homescreen, but I don’t care one bit about the apps that don’t make the cut. I search for them when I need them.

    3. John Pepper

      I agree… use spotlight and its super fast. Only unique app I can name on my home page that I go straight to is the one I’m most passionate about… “DJI”… that’s for my drone ๐Ÿ˜‰

    4. Vivek Kumar

      Same here – I search for them instead of organizing them (iOS)

    5. Matt Zagaja

      Same, although I do keep the frequent fliers on page 1 for easy opens. Not sure if this is because the home screen system is too hard to use or if spotlight is too easy. However I also use spotlight to open any non-dock apps on my MacBook Pro.

      1. LIAD

        re MB, me too. Apple + Space = quickest easiest way to find and open an app

    6. jason wright

      is this an apple-only app? i can’t find it on google play

      1. Susan Rubinsky

        Yeah, looks like Apple only. I’m on Droid too.

        1. jason wright

          sighis avc about to fork?

    7. Brian Manning

      Totally agree, as screens get bigger and there are more apps on my homescreen, i’m finding it’s easier to just swipe down and search. My first iPhone had 20 apps on the homescreen, my new iPhone has 28.

  7. sachmo

    I made a huge drive to make my homescreen as minimalist as possible about a year ago. I use NOVA launcher on android, and its worked beautifully. I have about 10 of my most common apps on a scrollable dock (only 4 at a time that I access), and a couple widgets (like a calendar & music players) on my side screens. Main home just has a clock with the time. That’s it.If I occasionally need to use other apps, I open the app drawer. I agree, you’d think there would be some service to share homescreen configurations or something by now.

  8. JimHirshfield

    Aggregating this data will create a great asset.But I wonder what’s in it for the consumer? What motivates one to share this?And if the answer is the greater good, then wouldn’t it just be easier to have the app scan my phone and report back in the background? (Yeah, that does sound creepy…so I guess that’s why they made it a screen capture…?). Anyway, maybe it needs more of a purpose (from a consumer’s perspective). A gaming angle?

    1. pointsnfigures

      Only discovery as @awaldstein:disqus said. Sometimes I find out best apps from friends.

      1. Susan Rubinsky

        I find the best apps from my teenage son and his friends.

    2. falicon

      Agree – *way* back in 2010 I built a simple hack for the first Techcrunch hackathon in NYC called AppsIGot ( http://techcrunch.com/2010/… )…it was an adobe air thing that basically scanned your itunes library for apps you have installed and then compared it to what your friends had installed (and let you dig into the details of it all).It had all sorts of klunky bits to it, but it basically worked and did reveal some interesting data/apps…but there were/are already a handful of services out there that did a better job of it than my weekend hack.Anyway – I do think there is a discovery angle that can be played, but personally this screenshot version just doesn’t feel like it’s going to be anything that catches on.

  9. William Mougayar

    I saw when you posted your Homescreen.is a few days ago, and so did others I follow on Twitter, and I went Ho-hum.No surprises on the leaderboard, and on most of what I saw. When something becomes popular to the point of putting it on your home screen, everyone knows about it already, and there is nothing new there.If you want to discover new stuff, truth is most users will install something new on their Last Screen, and that’s where the beta versions, and new interesting stuff is.Can we get a Lastscreen.is? That’s where some juice.is!

    1. awaldstein

      Great comment.For most people–that is not you my friend–apps are tool belts, a purse, stuff we use like a cc or a key.Community innovation side, they need to get stuff done, get info in the most efficient way possible. And the best is a popularity poll.So sure, for the investor, your comment is brilliant.For users, they are looking to get stuff done not for something new. The front page is market proven and the top ten list.

      1. William Mougayar

        It is, but if you’re interested in discovering what’s up and coming, App installation data would be useful, I think.

        1. awaldstein

          Very useful but not a consumer lens.Normal people discover stuff through their networks I believe.You are a recruiter and looking for verticalized CRM tools, you talk to your nets. You are a green juice fanatic and looking for something that navigates you around, you do the same.You and I, geeks and looking both bottoms up and top down. we are the market for these tools and it is a small one I believe.

    2. fredwilson

      Maybe nothttps://twitter.com/jordanr…

      1. falicon

        I love what you did there! ๐Ÿ˜‰

        1. fredwilson

          It was not intentional

          1. falicon

            I know – that’s part of why I love it!

      2. William Mougayar

        Discovery is different from Usage. I’m really interested in discovery. Maybe looking at the last 10 installed Apps might be revealing.

    3. Dan Epstein

      I think this could be a useful discovery tool. One next step could be recommending apps to users (here are new apps people you follow are using, here are new apps on their homescreens, etc.).From a “why share” point of view, if BW is generating affiliate revenue with links to the Apple App store, a portion of that could be shared with the user, encouraging folks to post updated homescreens.

  10. Twain Twain

    Weather Channel is only on 0.87% of home screens when we hover over Fred’s home screen. That’s interesting.So in the UK, Google Now advertises a lot on TV because Google wants us to help them train their voice recognition software (find ‘Behind the Mic’ on Youtube and you’ll understand this).In the advert they show a user scenario of someone wanting to bike to Margate (a seaside satellite town of London) and asking what the weather’s like. I’m wondering whether it’s because the weather is now baked into Maps and travel apps that people don’t feel the need to download it separately — hence the lower than expected 0.87%.

  11. falicon

    This is a perfect example of something with *great* value to the creator and almost ZERO value to the user.

    1. Twain Twain

      The investor thesis is that brands will be interested in knowing these metrics as a KPI (hence why Twitter moved to tracking what other apps we download) and that users will want to “Keep up with the Jones / Kardashians” and copy the same downloads and home screens.It’s much more interesting to understand, “WHY are people using these apps?”From Fred’s home screen someone who doesn’t know him can already profile and target products to him as someone who lives in NY, is into basketball and baseball, ABC1 in socio-economic class (because he obviously flies a lot if he’s got Delta on his home screen) and is into social networks.They would not, though, know “WHY” he’s downloaded those particular apps (they’re in the USV portfolio and he’s very hands-on with actually using what USV invests in — which is a great investor practice) and all the other context of him that they’d only get if they read AVC and followed him across all those social networks.

      1. falicon

        Yes I get what’s in it for *them* and why it’s ‘cool’ for the greater good…what I don’t get is what a *single* user actually gets out of this (in relation to the work they must do AND the data they are giving up).Successful things are generally about giving the user more value than they are putting in…I just don’t see that here.Doesn’t mean it’s not cool or even an interesting idea…and becaues BetaWorks is who BetaWorks is, they will get some initial uptake…but ultimately it will be a “15 mins of fame” sort of thing (I know because I have *a lot* of experience in building that sort of thing; I’ve made just about every mistake you can make in this particular book) ๐Ÿ™‚

        1. Twain Twain

          Yes, “Why would the user do this?” is a question investors often ask founders. Betaworks are investors so they likely have an answer.Why do people type into a Google search box? They’re trying to find something.Why do people type into a Facebook or Twitter textbook? Because they have an update or thought to share.Why did people check-in on Foursquare? Because they wanted to remember and document that experience in situ so they wouldn’t go back to a place where their experience was poor.Why will people use Homescreen? Maybe it will become a type of Klout or Kissmetrics for homescreens.Did Klout and Kissmetrics cross over to the mainstream like Google and Facebook?

          1. falicon

            I used to do consulting for BetaWorks (so used to know a lot of the people there; though most of them have moved on since)…my guess is that they aren’t thinking about this as much from an investor viewpoint as just a “hey we can do this, and it might be interesting” angle (that’s their usual reason behind building).That’s cool – I do that too – I’m just saying that the more you do this, especially if the “thing” doesn’t provide value to the user, the more of an uphill battle you have for the *next* one…there simply is a reputation cost to throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall.For your examples; google had an immediate payoff for the user; Facebook & Twitter needed a core crowd 1st, but after the initial hump there was an immediate payoff to users; Foursquare also had a solid single-player value out of the box;Klout had to work their ass off for awhile before they were acquihired (but timing was a *big* part of why they even got to where they got)…and to be fair, I don’t know much about kissmetrics as a company (so can’t speak to that one).Maybe I’m just being kranky today…and my history PROVES I’m def. not great at predicting winners…but I will be *SHOCKED* if this goes much beyond the usual 15 minutes of fame. *SHOCKED*.

          2. LE

            my guess is that they aren’t thinking about this as much from an investor viewpoint as just a “hey we can do this, and it might be interesting” angle (that’s their usual reason behind building).They are dealing on the level of the “unknown unknowns”. That is many things that at the start didn’t appear to have utility or someone would have already done them. That type of thinking.Of course on the other hand the “who would ever think that twitter would take off” doesn’t mean that some things on the face most likely should be passed over.That said, all we see “we” is things that they decided (investors, incubators, angels and so on) have gone forward with. We don’t see the things that they have not. The people who didn’t gain admittance.My guess, and this is strictly a guess, is that the common denoninator is who is doing the idea rather than the idea. I know that’s been said already plenty of times “invest in the team” but I think the halo drives many ideas. Not all, but a very large percentage of them.If you watch Shark Tank on ABC a similar bias is there as well. But for different reasons.

          3. Twain Twain

            I gained admittance to an incubator and was nominated as President of the graduating class.However, they wanted me to do a variation on Disqus.But the “fire in my belly” was and is for the system I’ve since built and not a copy of something that already exists.

          4. awaldstein

            I wish someone, hopefully Disqus, would make it their life’s mission to tackle long form comments on mobile.We need more mobile first communications platforms.

          5. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            WE NEED BETTER COMMUNICATION PLATFORM.PERIOD.

          6. fijiaaron

            We need communication = payment platform.

          7. thomasknoll

            Wait. What? Why?

          8. Twain Twain

            Originally, when Medium launched I thought it might do that: long form for mobile and Web.The graphic shows what happened in May when I was on-the-move with no access to a laptop so thought I’d write a post on my iPad.”Writing is not yet available on mobile devices” — Medium FAQ.That’s interesting in three respects:(1.) We read all the time that developers should build “mobile-first”.(2.) Evan Williams is probably aware that being late to mobile put Twitter at a disadvantage compared with Facebook and its mobile ads.(3.) It points to how apps are still being developed separately for Web and mobile rather than for use in Web+mobile simultaneously.Of course it has to do with the programming languages and frameworks involved.So this loops back to the thread yesterday about whether to learn Javascript or Swift or XYZ.Disqus is coded with a combination of Javascript and Python — two of Disqus’ engineers wrote a great book which shared this.Maybe mobile long-form is something already on their Roadmap.

          9. awaldstein

            I hope so–that is that Disqus will do this.Would be a sadder less conversant world without Disqus as plumbing.

          10. fijiaaron

            Anything is better than Disqus. Maybe they should merge with Paypal?

          11. Twain Twain

            Haha, it may be one of those cases where *SHOCKED* happens.Here’s a page from ‘Venture Capitalists at Work: How VCs Identify and Build Billion-Dollar Successes’ By Tarang Shah, Shital Shah.It may make us remember what happened with Twitter…Zachary is George Zachary of Charles River Ventures and Shah is Shital Shah in the dialogue.

    2. FAKE GRIMLOCK

      WHICH USERS WANT THING YOU BUILD FOR YOU INSTEAD OF THEM? NONE.

  12. ShanaC

    This actually would be a neat service if they tracked passively. Way better than app annie or comscore. TRying to convince people to share is just a way to only get a limited/certain sector of people to share.

  13. Richard

    What algo do they use to Identify app?

    1. leapy

      Visual inspection of the icon, judging by the errors….

  14. Matt Zagaja

    Discovery is a difficult problem so I’d like to share some thoughts on defining it. I think that there are two groups of discoverers. The first group is people that just got their phones or are diving into installing apps for the first time and are wondering what they should install. The second group is people who are power users that want to find new diamonds in the rough. The early adopters that try and install new apps before everyone else. I would guess that most AVC posters are in the latter group. However almost all app discovery tools, including this one, seem to be built to serve the first group. I think @wmoug:disqus hit the nail on the head with his post. The AVC community has yet to find an app discovery tool to service its own needs because everyone else is building them for the other people!The second unsolved problem that goes back to the first group of people, is how do we turn people who do not install apps and setup their iCloud, etc. into people that do those things. In other words, how do we make the app pie bigger? If Homescreen.is could find an answer to that problem, it could really take-off.

    1. William Mougayar

      And to go even further, what might be interesting is to get data on what Apps are being moved into the Homescreen, after being installed. But there is subjectivity there and intent isn’t always accurately reflected by the action, e.g. you might be travelling and jigging your Apps accordingly, or testing a friend’s new App or a company you might invest in, etc…Maybe App usage is still the most indicative, whether it’s on the Homescreen or not.

      1. awaldstein

        Bingo–i pay very little attention to app download numbers. Usage numbers are impossible to find and often never quoted as they are vastly smaller of course than download.

    2. awaldstein

      Really nicely articulated.I wonder whether the very group of people you think of as AVCer don’t find 90+% of all there is simply by network gravity. And whether this group is really that large.

    3. FAKE GRIMLOCK

      IT LIKE WORLD OF WARCRAFT.AUDIENCE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHICH BUTTON KILL THINGS VERY DIFFERENT FROM MAX LEVEL FANS THAT RUN OUT OF NEW THINGS TO DO.EACH NEED VERY DIFFERENT SOLUTION.

  15. ronanvance

    Interesting that Phone is not on the homescreen of your iPhone. Jobs introducing iPhone in 2007: “Three things . . . . an iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator.” It has really just become that third thing for most of us.

    1. fredwilson

      I don’t need it to receive a call and I usually text someone e to see if they can talk and then launch the call from the texting app

      1. LE

        usually text someone e to see if they can talkThat’s the app that hasn’t been invented that I’ve been waiting for forever.The “I’m here” app for a particular person’s call but not for everyone’s call. More or less the person calling doesn’t reach out you are marked as available to take their call or at least “more available”.For example the time that I am available to talk to my ex wife is different than the time that I’d talk to my daughter or my wife or the electrician.This is definitely a problem that can be figured out by someone. A way to mark contacts as to your availability in different degrees, changeable depending on who they are.I typically like to do “rough time xyz but text me first and then I’ll call you back”. I don’t like set times I find that very limiting.

      2. David Semeria

        A bit of trivia: Bob Geldof uses an old Nokia 6210 (he calls it the AK-47 of mobile phones). The ringer is broken so if you want to call him you need to text him first and ask him to stare at the screen so he can see the incoming call.

        1. fredwilson

          ๐Ÿ™‚

  16. Isaac G

    wow I feel out of it – I don’t use any of those apps except obvious ones like fb. I’m surprised so much twitter content made it onto the leader board as I’ve yet to find a compelling reason to use it. oh well

  17. LE

    Right now, this data is heavily skewed to the geek/tech insider crowd. You can see that in the data.Probably will stay that way as well. If you take two endpoints, grandma and tweens it’s kind of obvious that this has little utility or would hold little interest for them. At least enough to hit some kind of tipping point other than maybe a brief spurt of follow the leader before dying.

  18. bmathes

    One of the more blatant give-up-your-data-for-basically-nothing plays I’ve seen.Homescreens can be more personal (is Tinder on there?). I really doubt that many people want to share.App groupings throw this off a bit too: The bar is lower, and somme of the image recognition on icons fail: https://homescreen.is/ben_m…Honestly, I don’t see the value here _except_ trying to build some kind of stats proxy for app quality in an ecosystem where all the good data is hoarded by megacorps (apple/google). That is not value for the end-user.Then again, I’m pre-coffee. Who knows.

  19. Leapy

    Why does a hover over the Peggsite icon on Fred’s #homescreen give a russian app named Misheel? What am I missing?

  20. Stephane Gantchev

    What’s really interesting @fredwilson:disqus is that you don’t have the ‘phone’ icon on the home screen, and I just realized after making my upload (https://homescreen.is/sgant… that 15% of people don’t have it ! How do you make phone calls ? Through ‘contacts’ you don’t have access to ‘recent’ or ‘favorites’ ?! Or is it a trend to use more and more the smartphone as smart-not-necesseraly-phone device …

    1. fredwilson

      I answered that question elsewhere in this thread

    2. Susan Rubinsky

      Personally, I rarely use my Droid to call people.I suspect a lot of people use their devices primarily for things other than phone calls.

  21. Supratim Dasgupta

    I read a post somewhere that Jack Dorsey commutes in buses to see what people are using on their phones and what topics they are discussing! ๐Ÿ˜‰

  22. Chris Grayson

    Firstly: I love this. Great Idea that has been out there waiting to be made โ€” Many times I’ve found myself among colleagues comparing and recommending apps, which one’s we keep on our homescreen is a common part of the conversation, when someone inevitably says, “Someone should make an appโ€ฆ” so I’m glad to see that Homescreen.is did so.You ask:> why would you have an app on your homescreen that you donโ€™t use regularly?That makes the assumption that people are always rational actors โ€ฆAlso, because people do in fact look at each other’s homescreen, many people keep apps that reflect what they want to project about themselves. Like a bookshelf in your home. Remember when the Wolfram Alpha app was $50? Every geek and engineer I know bought it, and kept it on their homescreen. It was a status symbol. Now that it sells for $2.99 I don’t see it on anyone’s homescreen.As LIAD pointed out, the quickest way to any app past the homescreen is Spotlight. Most highly optimizing power users I know pay less attention to their homescreen for app navigation, and use Spotlight almost exclusively. I use it for anything deeper than my homescreen, but I do organize my homescreen.I also keep apps on my homescreen that I may not use as much, but I want to use more, or want to experiment with. If there is an app people are recommending, I’ll throw it on the homescreen in order to encourage myself to experiment with it. After a time, if I’ve not found the value, it will be relegated to a lower level page, or deleted.I also keep the MoMA app on my homescreen and have tried other cultural apps, to encourage myself to take advantage of them (and by extension, take more advantage of living in NYC). I don’t open the MoMA app as often as I should, but having it there keeps it top of mind, to make sure I take advantage of my membership. So while most apps on the homescreen may be ones we use most, there are also apps there to remind us to use them more.It also begs the corollary question:> Why would you hide an app from your homescreen that you use regularly?If some people display apps on their homescreen for status, many also hide apps from their homescreen that are guilty pleasures. For example, I see a lot of people spend tons of time playing games on their iPhone. I’ve never seen anyone keep their games on their homescreen. Additionally, one might choose not to keep banking / finance apps on their homescreen. No need to advertise that information to anyone, even if you use the app regularly.So given certain verticals, one’s homescreen may not be the most accurate measure of MAU / DAU.On that note, here’s mine:http://homescreen.is/chrisg…cheers

  23. SubstrateUndertow

    Wow!An “Us Introspection-data App” instead of the usual endless parade of “Me Introspection-data” focused Apps, albeit of the low hanging fruit variety.Not to diss the potential high value of better self-Interspection through personal-App data-metrics but the true revolutionary power inherent in our new “ubiquitous-network-effect” IMHO is in its powers to create distributively collective-introspection around our shared social/political/economic sentiments/needs/values/goals/priorities in order to sort out best-fit method-coherence between all the competing stockholder’s goals/priorities.

    1. Chimpwithcans

      A prioritisation of priorities?

  24. curtissumpter

    You know I think there are a more urgent site necessary.I buy a lot of media and I like having all of my songs on me all the time. You never know if you’ll be in the mood for Bon Jovi or Jay-Z. At the same time I find myself deleting apps that I either don’t use that often or apps I deem by the power of the Force to be memory or data hungry, i.e. Facebook. I wish there were an app or a website (in this instance a website without an app would probably be better) that would profile my iPhone, tell me how much data and memory each app is using and my frequency of use and allow me to delete them or back them up and restore them later if necessary.Memory on a mobile phone isn’t like a laptop, not nearly. I find myself memory managing a lot and it IS a pain in the ass.

  25. thomasknoll

    Data, I would like to see… distribution of *number* of apps on people’s home screens. Maybe I am just an extreme outlier: https://homescreen.is/thoma

  26. leigh

    oh super pumped about overcast and just downloaded it. I hate the regular podcast app on the iphone. Recently got 1password and while i find some things a bit frustrating to get used to (like the level of security to get into it which is of course the entire point of it so i have to suck that up) it’s slowly changing my password life.

    1. thomasknoll

      I tried overcast, and just couldn’t get into it since there wasn’t something for the desktop. I went with downcast instead. It’s not as clean and simple, but it lets me throw ANY rss feed at it, AND it syncs between mobile and desktop.

    2. Chimpwithcans

      @leigh thanks for turning me on to serial! amazing.

  27. OurielOhayon

    Can Homescreen go viral? let me try an answer: no.The longer answer is that beyond people like us very few care about homescreens and what app appear there. occasionally people care about what you use. but even that is not even to drive adoption at scale. How do i know? well…this is what we tried to launch years ago (and what many tried too without success including Max Levchin a few months ago)Jonathan can tell you more about it ๐Ÿ™‚

  28. bsoist

    why would you have an app on your homescreen that you donโ€™t use regularly?If you need to get to it quickly.I have some apps that I use daily, but usually just once a day, and I don’t put those on my main homescreen. I save my homescreen for apps that I might not use as much, but I need/want to get to quickly. Soundhound and IMDB are good examples.

  29. bsoist

    Go Nets!!!

    1. Tom Labus

      YEESSS. We need a little spunk!!

  30. John Revay

    Happy to see Peggsite on Fred’s home screen

  31. FAKE GRIMLOCK

    ASSUMPTION APPS ON HOMESCREEN ALWAYS USED OR LIKED BY USER PROBABLY WRONG.”ADDED ON WHIM, TOO LAZY TO DELETE OR MOVE” LIKELY SCENARIO.ALWAYS UNDERSTAND WHAT METRIC ACTUALLY MEASURE.

  32. jkadis

    Knicks & Nets?! Aren’t you supposed to pick just one? :)Here’s mine: https://homescreen.is/jkadi…Can you guess the background?

    1. Phil Jackson

      Forget the background,, fucking 400 mails ?? When are u gonna catch up ??

    2. fredwilson

      I have seasons tickets to both. The Nets at least show up and try to win this season

  33. Akshay Joshi

    Hmm! So why don’t you try Yahoo’s Aviate or other launchers. These launchers can help you keep your apps organized.

  34. Chimpwithcans

    Why would someone use pocket instead of evernote?

  35. jkadis

    This is teaching me I should remove the Mail app from the homescreen. I use the Gmail app (tried Inbox and didn’t like it) for all emails. I just opened it for the first time in a couple of weeks and it’s down to 374!