Here's my homescreen.
Here's my homescreen.
I never really thought about customizing but after seeing all these awesome screens I might give it a shot.
What's a good place to start?
Start with some organization. Do you really need a whole folder for 2 apps? And why are they both OBD? How do you need OBD that often?
You can leave apps you don't use often in the drawer.
That's a really good point. To be honest those automotive apps are a holdover from my last phone. I haven't opened either of those in years.
What music widget is that?
I usually get inspired by a good icon pack. Then I try to find a wallpaper that matches the tone and color scheme of the icons. Bonus points if there's some kind of symmetrical design on the wallpaper that you can work the icon placement around.
Edit: I'm also always tempted to put clock and date widgets on my home screen, but unless they bring something unique to the table I try to avoid them. They usually duplicate info that's available in the status bar and tend to break up the flow of the home screen imo.
Good pointers. Where do you go to find icon packs and whatnot?
The only good icon pack I've found on fdroid is "Arcticons," other than that they'll all be on Google play. There's a ton of stuff to sift through, so try to figure out what keywords drag uo the styles and colors you like. I gravitate towards icons that are tagged minimal, retro, vintage, abstract, pixelated, etc...
Another option is to try and find listicals that give you the "top ten (insert adjective here) icon packs in the play store", theres usually a good amount of those swirling around android police, cnet and other sites. Once you find your pack, use the same keyword type searches for the wall paper. Usually there are pre-selected wallpapers in the icon app itself though, so you may find something that fits well right there.
A good icon developer that I come back to a lot is Cris87 on the play store. Pretty much everything they do is awesome and they have a wide variety of packs to choose from. I think they are .99¢ a piece though.
Oh, and one more tip, try to find a launcher that allows you to change the icon size on your home screen. This depends on your taste, but the default ICOM size for launchers is almost always to big for me. Sizing them down a bit adds a feeling of subtlety to it.