You don’t need to go any further than iTunes to see the most popular iPhone apps, but a couple of days after Betaworks launched #Homescreen, an app which allows people to share their homescreens on Twitter, we thought it would be interesting to check the results so far. The above image was the result at the time of writing.
#Homescreen is an app with a single function: it allows you to share your current iPhone homescreen on Twitter. Betaworks uses image-recognition to identify the apps, and pulls together a constantly-updated image showing the most popular dock and homescreen apps.
Betaworks excludes Apple’s own apps, but does note that “between 45 percent and 65 percent of the home screens examined had replaced Apple’s default apps with third-party options,” reports TechCrunch.
One trend the company noted in a Medium blog post is the growing popularity of third-party messaging apps.
Facebook is Messenger is on 14% of people’s homescreen, Whatsapp is on 12 percent, Snapchat is on 11%, Path on 5 percent (while snapchat and path arent straight messaging app’s, worth noting them here for comparison), Groupme 4.7%, HipChat on 2.6 percent, Line on 1.5 percent, Viber 1%, Kik is on 0.5 percent.
Facebook, unsurprisingly, took the title of most popular third-party app provider, with 68.6% of homescreens having at least one of Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Pages or Instagram.
If you want to share your homescreen but can’t be bothered to download an app to do it, you can tweet a screengrab with the hashtag #homescreen2014.
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I keep my home screen as it is by default. I don’t like changing it and I do not understand people who do change it.
You should take a job at Apple. I think this is exactly their thought process as well, and why the spring board generally sucks and is 7 years out-dated, plus why there’s no easy ability to use your own third-party default apps for the mediocre apps Apple includes as part of the OS.
Just need to clarify that I don’t think Android is better, it’s a hot mess of anti-usability and I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy.
Dirto
Dude, that’s why we have a free-market economy. If you don’t like their product, jailbreak it, or get another product.
7 years outdated?!
Email is still email, SMS still exist, I still make phone call to my parents.
Please name any good mail client that support Exchange/IMAP/POP with simple interface, I don’t mind to pay few bucks.
By the way, I also have Mailbox.app for my personal mailbox.
@Jack Wong I use Acompli. Hands down the best email app I’ve ever used. I have all of my accounts hooked up to it and it’s flawless. If What’sApp were more secure, it would beat iMessage across the board and Fantastical blows doors off of Apple’s Calendar. hope those help you in your search.
People have dopamine issues. They are not satisfied with anything for longer than a day, and the ability to customize the hell out of things fills that void ever so temporarily. I’m not joking either.
At a certain point monotony becomes mind numbing. There’s a reason only a few really screwed nut jobs like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg make the choice to wear one sec of clothes the rest of their lives. Steve was a smart guy, but he died because he was a nut job and for no other reason.
Thank you.
You are joking, right?
Well, call me too Apple-minded or how should I call that but I really keep my home screen as it is :D I’m an iPhone user for 6 years now and I have never changed it and I have never even thought about that.
And it’s not different on my MacBook for me. I have never added any 3rd party icon to the dock. I have every 3rd party app stored in Applications folder and sometimes I use Dashboard too.
I add third-party apps I frequently use, from Adium (good for smaller third-party messaging apps) to uTorrent.
Bully for you brainless.
I was fine with your comment until you said that you don’t understand people who change it. What’s so hard to understand about people not using the same apps as you?
Me too I’ve been leaving it Default, for me it looks nicely organized
That is the dumbest fkn think I have read today!
I move my most used apps to the first screen. Apps I never use go in a folder and some other screen.
Same. The only thing I’ve altered is I’ve paired up like color apps, such as camera and clock, App Store and mail etc. although I have added YouTube to the default home screen and I’ve put it next to photo booth the colors fit together nicely
#homescreen
Really? Shazam? I mean, really?
That’s stupid knowing that Siri does the same.
I originally thought the same but the first time I was out in public and remembered that Siri added this feature I didn’t want to say, “Siri, what song is this?” out loud.
While I dont keep Shazam on my homescreen its in a folder, it is way more useful than Siri with song identifying. Siri talks over the song which is annoying, and Shazam keeps your identified songs in a list to revisit when you are ready to purchase them.
I don’t use Shazam a lot, but when I do, I want to get to it as fast as possible. Although yeah, I suppose I can access it using Siri as well.
Why don’t people use Paper instead of the FB apps?
Zite is much better than Flipboard. The latter has purchased the former but changes are still slow to be included.
How hard is it to take a screenshot and put up it up on Twitter yourself?
I suspect this is not actually representative of the iOS users at large (there is self-selection bias, since it only represents apps installed by #Homescreen users).