Do you ever instinctively go to open an app you use all the time and all of a sudden it is gone? Unfortunately, this has happened to most people more than once.
It doesn’t tend to happen in the general handling of your phone but can happen after an update of a particular app has been performed.
Well, good news, on Android you can lock your apps in place so you don’t lose them again – note, this is not the same as getting past your Android phone lock.
If you have a big storage device it can be hard to locate them especially since our muscle memory tends to be better than our actual memory when it comes to technology.
How do I lock icons on my home screen? – Android
You can drag icons and apps anywhere there is a free square on your home screen.
You can arrange and rearrange them into different orders, put them into groups and folders for more organized access and you can lock them in place so they don’t go astray.
To move an icon on your home screen to the desired location take the following steps:
- Go to your Android home screen.
- Find a blank section on your screen you want to move an app to.
- Tap and hold on to the app you wish to move and drag it to the location you have chosen.
- Tap and hold on to this space and you will see some options appear.
- Choose ‘Home settings.’
- Now toggle the switch to off next to the add icon on your home screen
Android allows us as users to customize our home screens, so first of all organize your home screen by arranging app icons the way you want them.
To lock your entire home screen layout you can try the following;
- Go on ‘Settings.’
- In settings press on ‘Display.’
- In-display find ‘home screen.’
- Here you can enable home screen layout lock.
- Now if you try to move any of your icons on the home screen you will see an error.
Using your home screen settings to lock apps to your home screen display is relatively simple on an Android phone, and having your home screen layout locked can stop annoying accidental deletes.
There are a few more things you can do to make your home display a little more stable and prevent you from moving or removing apps too.
How do I increase touch and hold delay on my phone?
If you increase touch and hold delay on your phone, it means you are less likely to accidentally move icons around your phone when looking for something or just in generally handling your phone.
This method teaches you how to make it take longer for the tap-and-hold gesture to register with your Android, preventing you from easily rearranging your icons.
This change also makes it so that you will have to tap and hold an item for a longer period of time in any app, not just the home screen.
- Go to ‘Settings.’
- Go to ‘Accessibility.’
- Choose ‘Touch and Hold Delay.’
- Choose ‘Long.’ Which now means it will take several seconds to register the hold gesture on your icons meaning less accidental rearranging.
How do I ‘Screen Pin’ my Android home screen?
Android Lollipop allowed us to screen pin our phone to a single app meaning that the phone will only show one specific app screen, the phone is temporarily locked in this app so you cannot access other apps.
Meaning if you have a kid using your phone on a game app, you can screen on it to that app and they cannot access other things on your phone. Genius right?
- Go to ‘Settings.’
- Got to ‘Lock Screen and Security.’
- Choose ‘Advanced.’
- Choose ‘Screen Pinning.’
- Select ‘On.’
- Choose ‘Enable Require to unlock PIN for unpinning.’
Conclusion
In conclusion, moving the icons around, or worse, someone else moving your icons around on your phone is frustrating because we get used to where we put things just like in real life.
The good news is that you can use the lock home screen layout settings to lock apps in their position, which makes it easier to add more apps without worrying about losing them.
With the methods we have listed above now you should have more control over where your apps are put, where they stay, and how long they stay there.
