After updating iPadOS 14.8 on my iPad mini 4 to iPadOS 15 in the UK on the 21st of September all my app and folder icons became irreversibly tiny. A new updated icon enlargement switch provided in IPadOS 15 is malfunctioning.
My (newly miniaturised) 15 major key stand-alone app icon symbols that I keep together on page one of my home screen, such as Settings or Contacts, are still identifiable by their distinctive colours and designs when I squint hard while wearing spectacles. But the previously larger identifying titles underneath my 20 homogenous identical looking folder icons that reside by themselves on page two of my home screen are now too minuscule to read at a glance. The distinctive app symbols which these shrunken unopened folder icons still display when closed have now been made microscopically small too.
In iPad operating systems up to iPadOS 14.8, app and folder icon sizes were controllable at - Settings > Home Screen & Dock > Home Screen > App Icons. This window displayed a twin tick button choice underneath two graphics depicting “More” (smaller) icons and “Bigger” (fewer) icons on two simulated Home Screen iPads shown side by side. Ticking the More option button allowed 30 smaller icons to be displayed on a Home Screen page while ticking the Bigger option (like me) allowed 20 larger icons to be displayed.
This iPad icon size control has been changed in iPadOS 15 at - Settings > Home Screen & Dock > Home Screen to a simpler on-off > “Use Large App Icons” toggle. But operating this switch has no effect whatsoever to either enlarge or shrink app and folder icons that remain fixed at their miniature given sizes.
For clarity, this issue is not about zooming controls that visually impaired iPad owners are compelled to use in the Accessibility settings. Posts about these controls are of no help at all. iPad mini owners, who are not visually impaired, don’t want to start faffing about zooming into parts of their home screens or permanently magnify a telescoped part of the full screen view they formerly enjoyed at a glance in exchange for the hard-earned cash they’ve previously paid to Apple.
In any event, the fact that the new “Use Large App Icons” toggle switch exists at all, and is located at the exact same spot as the iPadOS 14.8 icon size controller, suggests Apple wanted iPad owners to retain this functionality after updating their devices to iPadOS 15.
Accepting a retrograde loss of EFFORTLESSLY identifying my 20 folders in exchange for a small handful of larger newly inbuilt so-called “app organising” icons “designed” by Apple in iPadOS 15 is no work-around solution. These useless, limited and narrow-minded folders, as pre-loaded with artificially ignorant machine mismatched apps, have idiotic categories that Apple cannot truly believe go anywhere to matching the many-splendoured wide ranging gamut of mankind’s enthralling interests across the world. Misconceived Apple folders such as: “Suggestions”(?); “Recently Added”(?); “Information & Reading”(?); and … “Other”(?!?!?!?!!!!), all betray the feeble chaotic cluttered mind of someone dangerously disorganised. None of this nonsense could ever properly file the wide spectrum of subjects in my easily accessible separate folder icon categories that also include various sub-categories across several pages within each folder.
My folders have relevant titles. Such as, “On Air” for TV, streaming and radio apps. “Market Square” is for shops and delivery services. Different folders have broad diverse subjects: reference information; rarely used Apple apps; books and libraries; medical apps; hobbies and interests; banking and financial matters; and many, many more distinctive subject areas that means everything on my iPad is easy to find on one single home screen page with a microsecond of thought. Thus before iPadOS 15: Tap! - I open a recipe app for diabetics in my “Bon Appetite” folder. Tap! - apps in my “Way Out” folder show local bus or train times. Tap! - I see events for my harmonica group in my “Hobby Horse” folder and then in the same folder I find new parts for the old vintage car I’m restoring. Tap! - my “Stop Press” folder opens the newspaper and magazine journals I like. Tap! - my “Fun Fair” folder only has two games, cryptic crosswords and chess. Now after iPadOS 15: I can’t see what I’m doing or where I’m going.
Suggestions to buy a bigger iPad is also not a solution for me as I chose the iPad mini 4 because of its overall compact footprint on purpose.
Thank you for reading this post. Any advice on how to resolve this fault, or on ways to campaign that will make Apple executives fix it, would be very warmly welcomed.
Kind regards,
Seaniconsize
[Edited by Moderator]
