About the App drawer.....

The app drawer has been a staple in the Android Culture and in the OS in general.  A place for all apps you just don't uses but sometimes need.  Sorted in alphabetical order or in just complete disorganization because someone just decided to go nuts with the Android skin and forgot to make the app drawer good.  The experiences vary from phone to phone, but the concept has been the same, a place for spare apps to live, and a straightforward way for you to access them. So, let's get into it. 

An app drawer has had many different forms over the years in both Android and other operating systems. Windows Phone had its own app drawer, by swiping to the left a list view of all apps installed appeared. This list view is akin and the inspiration behind apple’s "app library".  Even palm and blackberry eventually put app drawers into their respective OSes Web OS and BB10 (RIP to both). The app drawer has been a design aspect of many OSes for many reasons. The concept is quite simple, your home screen is where you can pin your most important apps into pages for quick access. The App drawer is like a junk drawer, there is a lot of important items you don't often use but still need. The App drawer concept is place for those apps and other such programs.    

The implementations of this concept have varied with some adhering to the basic layout we see in Android (home screen;app drawer) while others have made the app drawer the home screen (such as tablet mode in Chrome OS). 

I personally don't use many apps, so I seldom use the App drawer, but most people have troves of apps. Especially those on iOS. It's common to find someone with 7-10 pages on their iPhone home screen. . pple has recently introduced the App Library in iOS 14 to help clean up after years of nothing and more nothing in terms of changes to the home screen. The app library is a different version of the App drawer concept; design is overall different more akin to Windows Phone. Swipe to the end of your home screen to access the App Library, there you can press on the different pre-made folders to find your app, or just search by precariously swiping down. The swipe down menu is almost identical to the app drawer in Windows Phone and that search menu is the most convenient way to quickly find your app. I'll admit that search feature is extremely cool, but the rest of the menu might cause some confusion in the future.  The App library organizes apps into folders with labels such as "games" for all your games.  This mean Apple oversees which apps go into each folder, for games it shouldn't really be a problem but for more complex apps it does tend to get things wrong.  All these views are based on the current public beta so things might be better in the release build but the fact still remains Apple is choosing where your apps go, no such thing as choice, hopefully Apple will allow you to move apps or even make your own folders(which would be awesome).  The Android App drawer is usually organized alphabetically helping to ease the amount of confusion. 

The app drawer has a long way and future improvements are welcome, always. 

Thanks for reading and watching, 

Best, 

BenTechCoder 

If you want to learn more about the iOS public beta here's a video by indie creator Rene Ritchie that goes deep into the beta: