Select Home screen

[dandager]

I used to be able to long hold on a blank part of one of my start pages with app icons, widgets, and links and it would let me scroll thru my various pages to select the one that I wanted to designate as the HOME screen, also had a PLUS sign if I wanted to add another page, and I could pull a page up to the trash to delete it. All that is now gone. I have no idea how to designate which screen is my HOME START screen. Did android take that away from us?

I use a MOTO G and have android 10

 

[mustang7757]

Hi, welcome to AC!
Have you tried safe mode ?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Does anything come up when you long press an empty part of the homescreen? Is it just options for Widgets, Wallpaper, and Home Settings?

What you describe is more associated with older launchers -- newer stock launchers tend not to have that interface. If you want more control over your homescreens, try a 3rd party launcher like Nova.

BTW, keep in mind that it's not "Android" that's entirely responsible for these changes -- each manufacturer is responsible for their own stock launcher. Some manufacturers stick pretty close to the "vanilla" Pixel launcher, but they're still the ones who are ultimately responsible for how the launcher works.

 

[dandager]

Yes, that little menu pops up, widgits, wallpaper, home settings. I honestly don't even know what a launcher is, how to activate it, how to get a better one that will replace the one MOTO put in my phone, but I will go to the play store and look for Nova. The odd thing to me is that I was always able to arrange my desktop start pages or create a new one or delete a page normally before. Does this mean whatever launcher I may have changed their app? Why would the launcher I have take away my ability to do these things? The way I even noticed it happened is that yesterday morning I noticed my start page was completely gone and so I had to reconstruct it and then I wanted to select it as the home screen but there was no way to do that so I had to move every icon off of the one I was being forced to use as the start page off to this new page and then let that become my new start page because I was being forced into that process.

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

Sounds like a nightmare. I would try nova or if you prefer something simple there is action launcher or smart launcher.

 

[B. Diddy]

The odd thing to me is that I was always able to arrange my desktop start pages or create a new one or delete a page normally before. Does this mean whatever launcher I may have changed their app? Why would the launcher I have take away my ability to do these things?

It was probably a change between Android 9 (Pie) and Android 10. Did your phone get the Android 10 update some time recently?

Here's a tutorial on how to use Nova: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-use-nova-launcher/

 

[dandager]

Thanks for your replies. Interesting, I'm a novice Android Central user but on my PC I cannot see how to reply at all but on my mobile phone I do see a reply box. After refreshing and getting out, back in, out, back in, now I do see the reply box.

When I got this Moto G power phone it already had Android 10 installed but there have been a couple of updates since I've owned it so it's possible that they changed their launcher. I did find a launcher in my phone called "Moto launcher" and I tried clearing cache, data, looking for updates, writing to the developer, etc, nothing helped, so I have downloaded Nova and I have switched my default launcher to that one.

Thank you for your help it works perfectly fine. Hard to believe Moto would remove this control from their launcher. I thought it was especially interesting that I called Motorola five times yesterday and explained my problem to all of the agents and none of them understood my problem and none of them had an answer and none of them asked me what my launcher was or suggested that I should uninstall or reinstall the launcher, none of them even said the word launcher.

 

[B. Diddy]

on my PC I cannot see how to reply

Make sure you're logged into your account. Click the menu button at the upper left and see if your account is active, or if it gives you a Login option.