Organizing my space

[Icegoddess]

OK, I've had a Droid phone for awhile now, but just got the Note 10.1. I am confused by the menus. What is the purpose of the Home menu vs the Apps menu. Some of the stuff I downloaded automatically went to my Home menu, and all went to the apps menu on different pages. I have no use for those Hubs on the home page and would rather put apps that I use frequently there. Can I just get rid of them?

And what's with the Widgets tab? All you can do with them is move them around. They don't seem to do anything. If I tap on a widget it just brings up a note that says if I press and hold I can move it. What am I missing?

 

[EvilMonkey]

The home Menu takes you back to your home screen, while the Apps menu takes you to your list of apps. Think of it like this: the home screen is like a desktop on your PC. You'd put those things you use frequently there so you can get to them quickly. You might also have apps you only use every few weeks or very rarely, and they can just stay in your app drawer, hidden away until you need them.

To remove an app from your homescreen, long press on it (hold you finger on it for a second until it "pops" off the screen), then drag it to the trash bin that will appear, and it'll disappear from your screen (it'll still be in your app drawer though). To add one to your homescreen, open the app drawer, find the app you want, and long press on it and the app drawer will disappear and you can drop the app anywhere on your homescreen.

Widgets are little programs that run on your homescreen. They don't really do anything in the app drawer other show you they are are available. Similar to adding apps to the homescreen, you can long press on one (in the app drawer) and then place it on your homescreen. Widgets can be anything from showing you the current weather or forecast to the price of a stock, or some of your recent unread mails or Facebook posts. They are really meant as a quick way to view information without having to open up several apps. Typically tapping on a widget will open the associated app (so a weather widget might just display that it's raining outside and the temperature is 68 degrees, but tapping on the widget will open up the actual app where you can view the entire forecast or radar or whatever the app has).

For example on my phone, on my homescreen, I use widgets to display my battery percentage, my next appointment on my calendar, how many missed calls/emails/text messages I have, the time my alarm will go off, the weather and forecast for the day and several other things. I get access to a lot of info that otherwise I might have to open several apps to see.

This allows you to really customize the look and feel of your homescreen to what works for you.

Hope that helps.

 

[boxer2]

OP could have said thanks, smh.

 

[Icegoddess]

OP has been off the grid. I do appreciate the help. The analogy makes sense. I am a Mac person, and for me Widgets work on the page where they are placed called the Dashboard. Therefore, I couldn't understand why you couldn't click on them or something and do something with them. I love my Mac Widgets. A lot of this stuff might be more intuitive for Windows people although I can to Windows also, just not as knowledgeable about it. I'm not totally inept though; I got Flash up and running with no problem.

 

[bluzman]

OP has been off the grid. I do appreciate the help. The analogy makes sense. I am a Mac person, and for me Widgets work on the page they are placed called the Dashboard. Therefore, I couldn't understand why you couldn't click on them or something and do something with them. I love my Mac Widgets. A lot of this stuff might be more intuitive for Windows people although I can to Windows also, just not as knowledgeable about it. I'm not totally inept though; I got Flash up and running with no problem.

A couple of other things that help to organize:
1) If you long press an icon on your Home page, you can drag it to the upper left and drop it on "Create Folder". I use this feature to make folders that group apps with common functionality, say email clients or web browsers.
2) If you pinch with thumb and index finger on "Home" page, you get a screen that shows that you've actually got multiple home pages. You can add, delete and rearrange them from this screen.

 

[Icegoddess]

Thanks. I'll have t play with that. When I was trying to figure out how to toggle the keyboard between the little notepad and a keyboard I kept getting this message about pinching the fingers together on the keyboard to change it. However, I was on the little notepad and every time I tried it there, it just wanted to draw a line.

BTW, where do I find the setting to ignore my palm. I keep resting my palm on the tablet and accidentally bringing things up.