Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!
This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.
It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:
- Something interesting that happened to you
- Something humourous that happened to you
- Something frustrating that happened to you
- A quick question
- A request for recommendations
- Pictures of your pet
- A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
- Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)
So how’s it going?
I’m a weirdo and so I use a launcher called KISS. There are different options but how I have it set up, it’s mostly a clear screen except a search bar at the bottom with some favourites pinned above it. Then if you tap the search bar, it fills the screen with a list of the most commonly used apps. Or you can tap a button on the side of the search bar to see all apps, or start typing the app you want.
I also have gestures set up, so I swipe different directions on that blank home screen to open different apps.
I was previously using Pie Launcher, where there are no apps or widgets on your screen until you tap and hold and a circle of your pinned apps appear, then you swipe to the one you want to open. KISS was a bit less frustrating for others to use, but still a bit haha.
I love it though. For a long time I had the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day on my wallpaper, so having a clean home page meant I could see the picture really well.
That sounds fun actually.
I just have some folders with frequently used stuff, and one whole screen devoted to a non crap weather widget (Weawow) a search widget, and Agenda Widget.
I use persistent notifications for a few things, and occasionally apps get promoted to the home screen temporary, for example when I go to the USA in September I’ll dig up the airnz app out of the app drawer.
Some of that’s general laziness but also at some point I just lost interest in customisation for the sake of customisation and I tend to only go looking for options when I’m annoyed with something or if the amount of slack I can gain from customising will outweigh the effort.
I had the same background picture for like 6 years. Got bored enough during lockdown that I changed it, but then had to redo my colour and icon scheme.
I had the same background picture on my phone for about the same amount of time, whenever I tried to change it, it didn’t feel like my phone anymore.
That phone still has the background picture, but I got a new one last Christmas and now that one has become the phone for playing podcasts for the kids (and occasionally Minecraft).
Oh wow, I forgot about APOD!
I loved some of their colourised nebula images
Yeah lots of cool stuff. You can use Muzei and the Muzei APOD plugin to automatically change your background each day.