How to Use iPhone OS's New 'Folders'

Now that all my frequently-used iPhone applications have passed through the gauntlet of approval for Apple's newest iPhone OS, I've upgraded my iPhone to iOS 4.0.  Almost immediately, it made my smart phone habit much simpler and manageable—thanks to a feature called "folders".  This feature works on both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, so you probably don't have to buy a new phone to take advantage of it.

I used to have five screens full of applications. I had done my best using iTunes to organize them into specific pages to make it easier to find the app I wanted, but that still meant a lot of scrolling back and forth.  Apple's iOS 4 has made it possible to get all my apps onto a single screen, organized into labelled folders so that my apps are always just two taps away.

To organize your apps into folders, do the following:

1. Press down on the iPhone screen on the icon for an app you want to put into a folder, until the icons all "jiggle" and display the circled "x" in their upper right corner.  This is the mode you use to move or delete apps from your phone.
2. "Drag" the app across the screen to another app that you want to put in the same folder, and then lift your finger.  
3. A window will pop up with the two apps—the "folder". A title, based on the category assigned to the apps in the iTunes store, will appear in a text box above them. You can change the folder title if you like, by touching the text box and entering a new title when the text editing keys pop up on the screen.
4. Repeat the process until you have all the apps you want in the folder, If you need to move an app to a different screen to merge it, you can drag it to the bottom left or right edge of the screen, and the apps will page past. 
5. Press the "home" button (the button at the bottom of the iPhone's screen) when you're done. This puts you back into the normal usage mode for the iPhone.

Each folder can hold a maximum of 12 apps. That means, in a perfect world, that you could get 192 apps onto a single iPhone screen.  Once you've organized your apps into folders, you can reach them in two taps: one tap on the folder they're in, then on the app icon when the folder's contents is "blown up" on the phone's screen.