When iOS 4 launched, the thing I looked forward to the most was app folders. Swiping through 11 screens, trying to find what I wanted, almost had me jumping ship. Now with these little marvels of organization, I’m cruising along with just three or four screens of alphabetized groupings. My inner type A nerd is pleased.
But what makes my inner design nerd happy was learning this neat little tip: By using an Emoji keyboard, you can input those special graphical characters into your app folder names!
If you don’t know Emoji, you should — especially if you spend a lot of time texting other iPhone pals, or want a graphical keyboard to jazz up notes and stuff. They’re basically tiny little images (actually, emoticons) that can be inserted, copied or pasted in line, just like text.
These have been popular for a long time here at home and in Asia (where Emoji has exploded!). Today, we’re going to use these fun add-ons in an “off-label” way — inside your app folders.
Here’s how:
A. Download an Emoji app, like this free little wonder in the App Store. Follow the instructions for enabling the keyboard, just like any international keyboard you might want on your device. (For this app, you’d enable it under Settings, then General, Keyboard and International Keyboards.)
B. Launch your Emoji app, then just click on the ones you want: little smiley faces, vehicles, food items, apparel, you name it. You’re going to copy them, all in a row. (It’s easier this way.) Be aware that if you have a dark wallpaper, dark Emoji will have a hard time showing up, so try pick light ones if you can (or if you’re using a light background, conversely, you’d use dark Emoji).
C. Hold your app folder till it jiggles, then click on it to rename it.
D. Paste in the Emoji wherever you want it, and delete the rest. When you’re done, click out of the folder and go to the next one. Repeat.
That’s it!
Thanks to the good work of iPhone J.D., a site geared for iPhone-using attorneys, we’ve also got another option: If you want to have additional symbols, like the Apple logo, there’s a web app for that!
Just point the Safari browser on your device to http://mrgan.com/gb/ and make it a homescreen bookmark. By launching it there, you’ll have a few more symbols to copy and paste into your app folder names.
