How to organize apps into folders and make them stick in iphone 3gs?

Hi, Yes, I see what you are saying, but that seems way too tedious on an iPhone screen. As far as I can tell from the instructions, making the folders, and putting apps in them, can be done on the iPhone home page, and others, open on the Mac. If I do not find another answer here; next time I will try again to do it on the phone after trying just one folder with apps again on the Mac.

Thanks for your input.

OK, I spent another afternoon doing the job started yesterday. Last night (could not sleep, so might as well think) I got to thinking that I really must have missed a step or something because all my work was done on the Mac and I did not recall any time when I transferred the new setup with folders to the iPhone.

Sure enough, when I tried it today I did find that missing step. When looking at the Home Page of the iPhone or any page being worked on, in the lower right hand corner two buttons say

SYNC APPLY



I do not recall using the APPLY button on the first day trying this, but I used it this time.



After making changes, I hit APPLY and the computer began to sync with the iPhone.

This time, although there is nothing telling the user what is going on, the sync actually makes the iPhone pages to look exactly like the pages created on the Mac.

Too bad the instructions and help did not say to do things in this way, which is the only correct way, as far as I can tell.

I have about 155 apps on the iPhone, making the job extra lengthy. However, I never could do it on the iPhone’s tiny screen, even though it is possible, so this was good - working on the larger screen of the MacBook.

There are also some (undocumented?) tricks in using the MacBook for this task. For example, it is possible to create a folder and then, using the list of all apps on the iPhone that is on the left side of screen, open the folder, click on the check box next to any app you want to put in the folder and it will jump right in!

If the check box already has a check mark, just click the box to remove it, click again to put the check mark in the box and voila the app takes off for the folder. This also works to just put apps onto a certain page, if you want to do that, but dragging apps around sometimes works better.

I hope it will not be necessary to do this again because of the time involved, and he need for quite a bit of thinking on how to move the apps and folders around to get everything just where you want it on the iPhone. The work reminded me of an old kids game that has a small square case with, I guess eleven movable numbers, that are all mixed up, and one space that is not filled with a number. You can move the little squares with the numbers around inside the case to try to line the numbers up in order from 1-11 and do it faster than anybody else.

Well, unfortunately lining up all my apps was like that because each page of the iPhone only holds 16 folders or apps and each folder is limited to 12 apps. Starting with 155 apps it takes too much mouse maneuvering to make the process easy.

Finally, the automatic folder names are very broad, as in MUSIC, LIFESTYLE, SPORTS and such, so I often just deleted the given categories and put my in my own. Also, some day I may break down the folders more because twelve apps in one folder means the apps are still pretty much out of view.



I wrote this in case anyone else finds it and has the same irksome product. If I just reinvented the wheel, please do not tell me now. 🙂

Please see my last post. I explain how I figured out the answer to my problem. Maybe my floundering around will help someone else trying to organize their apps.