IOS 15 Home screen and Library mess.

There are many changes within iPadOS15 - of which one is the loss of the Today view, that you illustrate, that can be pinned to the first Home Screen. 

Whilst you are now able to freely position widgets on any of the Home Screens, you have lost the “compact” first Home Screen layout (that shows a compressed 5x6 grid of App/Folder icons and Today view). Now, without the compressed view, Widgets individually occupy elements of the 4x6 icon grid - and will displace some App/Folder icons as necessary.

Apple do invite constructive feedback, comments and feature requests via their product feedback pages. For iPad and iPadOS:

Feedback - iPad - Apple

You are encouraged to make use of this facility in expressing any views concerning issues, bugs, or functionality changes of which you are unhappy.

Oops, the image was too big, I guess, that it didn’t attach. I hope this reduced size will. Yeah, it did. This is not representative of the huge iPad 12.9 screen! I really reduced it too much. As you can see, icon sizes can be reduced and spacing can be reduced to accommodate 8 x 12 grid on the main screen. That is double in the current iOS 15 grid!

There is too much wasted space on my iPad’s 12.9” screen! Ever since I had this iPad, I have always longed for closer spaces between app icons but I guess Apple developers don’t see what I see - too much wasted space! How about at 10 x 10 grid instead of 5 x 6?

Am I the only one who has been longing for more app icons on the main screen? I don’t need fancy widgets. I’m an old fart so I want everything simple and I want widgets to be on their own space like in ios14. I also want widgets to be resizable.

At the risk of hijacking someone else's thread, as you have discovered, update to iPadOS15 introduced the ability to add Widgets to your Home Screens - some being added to your first Home Screen, by default, during the initial update to iPadOS 15.x.

The pinned Today View of iPadOS14 - that includes the Time, Day and Date above the scrollable widgets, as seen on the first Home Screen - is not replicated in iPadOS15. You do, however, have a similar slide-out view in both Portrait and Landscape screen orientation.

Widgets placed on a Home Screen now individually occupy one or more elements of a 4x6 icon grid. Home Screens without Widgets retain the familiar 5x6 icon grid.  With the grid accommodating fewer icons when Widgets are present, other App and Folder icons may be displaced to the next Home Screen - and this may have a ripple-effect where Home Screens icon grids are fully populated.

Widgets cannot be resized per-se, but many Widgets offer multiple optional views - occupying a 1x1, 1x2 or 2x2 section of the Home Screen grid.

Widgets can be removed entirely from any Home Screen, but removal does not cause displaced icons to be restored to their prior locations. Re-arrangement must be done manually. This is perhaps a less onerous task than might initially appear, as Home Screen icons should still follow their original sequence (reading left-to-right / top-to-bottom). With multi-selection of App/Folder icons, it is possible to simultaneously move several icons if you wish.

Yes, I just submitted a feedback to the Apple gods. I asked for a iPad screen that will hold all my apps, just like the iOS 15’s App Library! Wouldn’t it be nice to have all the widgets on the first screen the App_Library-like second screen?

Looks like this topic is not so popular! Only firefox111 and LotusPilot are visiting this topic. Even the OP is not responding! It seems like the iPad community is sleeping.

Wake up you guys, let’s ask for compact icon spacing in our iPads.

Apple invite submission of constructive comment and feature requests via their Product Feedback portal:

Feedback - iPad - Apple

Still, ios 13, 14, 15, etc, there’s too much wasted space in the home screen, especially on bigger format iPad’s.

This is my 12.9 iPad’s home screen. Look at the spaces side-to-side, up-to-down, between app icons! What a waste!