I have been using MIUI now for less than two weeks. It took me a long time to finally decide to give it a shot and I can honestly say that I am very happy that I did. I know one of the more prominent arguments on why people don’t want to switch to it is the lack of an app drawer. There are many solutions to the potential argument. The most obvious is to install your favorite launcher apps like ADW Launcher EX or GO Launcher. After all, it is still just Android and apps still work. Honestly the iPhoneish look and no app drawer argument is really a mute point.
- Long press on your screen to get into preview mode.
- The first item you can add to a home screen is a ‘Folder’
- Drag the folder to the screen and drop it.
- Now tap on the folder and hit the small ‘edit’ button located at the top left.
- Give the folder a name. In this case I named it ‘Apps’.
- Now select how you want the folder to organize the items you drop into it.
- I choose ‘by name’ so they sort in alphabetical order.
- Hit ‘OK’ then hit your home button.
- Now simply drag all the apps you want into that folder and drop them in.
- A final step that you can choose to do is drag it to the dock bar so your apps are available on any screen, like you are used to.
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Quite honestly I could deal with the lack of a launcher if I could somehow tell MIUI to just alphabetize the fucking apps on the desktop. I used the trick some time ago to fix the problem, but its not without problems of its own. I honestly think they should use the idea posted in several of the forums of adding an Apps tab to the pulldown shade.
biggest problem with that is you can only have one icon EITHER in your folder or on the desktop
Please elaborate what you mean by that. I am aware that the icon would always be a folder icon, so you wouldn’t be able to change that.
Stormy, back when I was an active writer, I actually posted a HOWTO about this exact issue.
And what Bret means is that you can’t have an app shortcut on the homescreen when it resides in the folder. Like, if you have your FB icon in your folder, you can’t have the actual FB icon on the homescreen.
AH, ok.. Thanks for the clarification. I was a bit confused on what the issue was. I can see how that might make things a little more interesting. A person could always leave the most frequent apps on a screen though and not toss them all into a folder. I personally wouldn’t throw say Hootsuit into a folder if I use it everyday.
Thanks for the info. I like the make your own app drawer approach… but am not putting it on the dock.
Also, it’s moot point.