Primary ‘page’ on iPhone erased

[Alwyn]

My home screen seems to have been erased although a search lists them all alphabetically. I am gradually reorganising my apps as I want them but wonder if anybody knows how this happened and how it can be avoided in future.

 

[MacInWin]

What iPhone, what version of iOS, what does "erased" mean, please? Have you upgraded the iOS recently? What are you doing to "reorganize" the apps?

 

[Alwyn]

What iPhone, what version of iOS, what does "erased" mean, please? Have you upgraded the iOS recently? What are you doing to "reorganize" the apps?

iPhone SE 2; iOS 16.3;all the app icons on the original home page had disappeared although I have now reconfigured the home page the way I want it, pretty much as it was. I’ve just upgraded to iOS 16.3 but the problem preceded the upgrade.

As for how I reorganised the home page, I discovered that by scrolling right from the home page I could see automatically labelled files with apps in them and there is a search option that lists all the app library in alphabetical order. By pressing and holding my finger on each app I moved it to the home page. For similar apps like Finance etc there is room for all the apps I use regularly (55) in labelled files.

 

[MacInWin]

Ok, just to be clear, with iOS now there are pages to the left and right of the "normal" home pages. If you keep swiping left, you get to what is the "App Library" where iOS has organized the apps into folders based on the metadata about the apps themselves, so "Recently Added," "Utilities," etc. Those folder work just as any folder does. If you keep swiping to the right, once on the home screen you get to a widget screen were you can have widgets for frequently used data. For example, I have widgets there for Calendar, Weather, and Battery status. It is possible to have NO widgets, in which case that screen is blank. Given that you described the situation that way, I'm wondering if that is what you really saw, a blank widgets screen? Sort of a stab in the dark, here, but just wondering. Also, it is possible now to have widgets on the home screen. Do you have any there? I have been running iOS 16 from the day it was released and have not seen what you have reported, so I don't think it's systemic.

 

[Alwyn]

Well no my home screen wasn’t blank, it was just missing all the apps that had been there before. As you know, once the home page is full, additional apps overflow into another page. These apps were now showing on the home page.

What you call widgets are presumably the app sized folders formed by dragging an app icon onto another one. I have several on my home page and they are sorted into alphabetical order as are the apps inside them.

 

[MacInWin]

What you call widgets are presumably the app sized folders formed by dragging an app icon onto another one. I have several on my home page and they are sorted into alphabetical order as are the apps inside them.

No, those are folders in iOS. Widgets are small screen items that have data in them from the underlying App. So, for example, if I put the Calendar widget on my Home page, then I can see the Calendar items for today and tomorrow without having to open Calendar. Or, I can have a countdown timer to some event without having to open the countdown app. Here is a link to the User Guide from Apple:

iPhone User Guide

Here’s everything you need to know about iPhone, straight from Apple. This definitive guide helps you get started using iPhone and discover all the amazing things it can do.

support.apple.com

and here is the information on Home Page widgets:

Add, edit, and remove widgets on iPhone

Add widgets to the iPhone Home Screen to see today’s headlines, weather, calendar events, and more at a glance.

support.apple.com

i would recommend reading the entire User Guide, it is a well-written document and well worth the time to get the most from your iPhone.

 

[Rod]

It sounds like you may have "Reset Home Screen Layout". This is an option under General > Reset, in Settings.
It can also occur after Reset All Settings but it results in putting all the Native apps on the first Home Screen and all the rest in alphabetical order on the following screens. It also removes any custom folders you may have created.
I too have an iPhone SE 2 and I have used this deliberately on occasion to reorganise the Home screens in particular after the introduction of the App Library with iOS 14 in 2020.
I realised there was no point in having multiple pages of apps when they could easily be found in the library or Search Function.
I moved all of the native apps I never use to a folder and put it on the second (Home) page, put the ones I use daily in the Dock or on the first page (you can put folders in the Dock too). The rest of the apps I use regularly I left on the second page.
So, now I have two Home Pages instead of 4 and the rest of my apps are in the library.