5 Years of Home Screens
About five years ago, I started taking one screenshot of my iPhone home screen each month and archiving it. I really don’t know why but I just kept doing it. With 2018 coming to and end, it was time to sit down and put all home screens together. The result is a curious cross section of my iPhone usage history.
Observations
- What happened in March 2015?
- My iPhone 6 is entering its fifth year and still going strong.
- There is not one single month where my home screen hasn’t changed. That’s weird.
- I seem to mostly like monochrome wallpapers and sometimes some colorful gradients.
- 11 months was the longest time with a single wallpaper.
- I kept the folders in the Dock trend going for over a year.
- Currently I’m doing the single folder thing and it’s working well.
- I wish I had some screenshots from before the big iOS 7 redesign.
- OmniFocus has a big presence even though I haven’t used it all that much.
I thought this would be more interesting. Just looking at the screenshots and types of apps, there don’t seem to be significant changes in how I’ve used my phone over the past five years. Well, onto the next five years!
Home Screen Shortcut
I probably wouldn’t have stuck with collecting home screens this long if it weren’t for this shortcut I created. It makes the entire process quick and easy. The shortcut takes the home screen image as input, adds it to a specific photo album and then archives it to Day One along with some additional metadata (iOS version, device type).