Jeremy Sikora recently posted his top-five jailbroken iPhone applications. Sitting at number five was Categories, an application that allows one to sort their applications (from the AppStore or elsewhere) in labeled sub-screens that are accessible by clicking the appropriate icon. For example, rather than scroll through the home screen to find the Enigmo game icon, one could instead put the Enigmo icon inside a “Games” category which sits on the home screen itself. Launching the Games category would then open a new home screen containing Enigmo and whatever other games one decided to put into the Games category.
Overall, the concept of Categories is nice, and something we’d hope Apple (for reasons of SDK restriction) would include as an official iPhone feature. We say this because Categories falls short in a couple areas, one of which is particularly worth noting given Sikora’s poor description of Categories’ usability.
…instead of scrolling from screen to screen, you can have one screen containing all of your App folders for instant access to what you want.
This description is false because launching a category folder created by a user is anything but instant. In fact, there’s a lag time of a couple seconds before the applications in a Categories folder even show up. In the meantime, the user is greeted with a little “Loading…” message. By our estimates, by the time icons finally show up, one could have swiped the screen at least three times to scroll past home screen pages. In other words, despite Categories being a nice idea, the application’s installation is questionable if a user has less than four home screens worth of applications in the first place, as it doesn’t speed up accessing an application under these conditions at all.
Regarding speed of use, the other issue we have is that one can’t simply move application icons into a created Categories folder. Instead, one needs to launch Categories and go through its settings to add, remove, or sort where application icons show up. Again, using the iPhone’s basic icon manipulation methods is much quicker than using Categories. At the very least, within a Categories folder, moving icons around should be simpler. Finally, having to press the home button to back out of a Categories folder is simply annoying, as we would much prefer an on-screen “back” icon.
One of the reasons Categories takes so long to load folder contents is because every folder created is, in effect, an application itself. As such, there’s application lag before anything useable is displayed, which is why so many developers choose to display splash screens or “fake” interfaces before the actual interface is loaded. This means that the lag isn’t something Categories can shrug off easily.
We don’t know if a non-Apple version of Categories is even possible to build where there’s no lag before folder contents are displayed, and where icon drag-and-dropping into folders is an option. Nonetheless, we’re hoping it is, and we hope Categories evolves into that sort of tameable beast. In the interim, we’ve removed Categories from our iPhone and are content enough with scrolling through our four pages of applications until something better comes along. Sadly, Categories isn’t it yet.
Similar Posts:
- Still no iOS app data backup in iTunes? – We’ve now seen four generations of iPhones, have witnessed iterations of the iPod Touch, and seen th…
- Conceptualizing an Apple sub-notebook: the Apple Annex. – When we commented on the Macbook Air, we were not pleased with the unit’s price, particularly as it …
- On iPhone weather apps. – Ben Brooks wrote [a solid review](http://brooksreview.net/2011/04/weather/ “Finding a good weather a…
{ 31 comments }
I have also found that it doesn’t “see” all the apps I have, meaning I am left with some that I can’t move anywhere. Even similar apps to ones it does see are left stranded.
It’s a nice idea, the delay doesn’t bother me too much; the more time-sensitive apps are kept out of it for me, but I would prefer a more all-encompassing one.
100% ACK!
I have removed Categories after I tried it, because it introduces 3 times more problems than it tries to solve. Start time is far too slow. It’s not localized. Fonts within the “Folders” look jagged. Even some icons look different than before and the corners of icons sometimes are not round, i.e. the icon is displayed as a square. Icons can’t be re-arranged with a finger tip, as outside the folders. It is not possible to drag and drop icons into folders.
Overall the application has a look and feel that is not very iPhone like.
I currently have 65 application icons on my screens and it’s very painful the find an application. Therefore I hope Apple will bring a solution as soon as possible.
You can eliminate the delay (most of the time) by selecting the little “i” icon in the lower right (when a category folder is being displayed). This will bring up a settings screen for that category — one of the options is “keep resident”. (It requires the backgrounder app to be installed.) If you turn this on, the next time you open the category folder it is much faster.
So you only get the delay the first time you open a category (and occasionally afterwards for reasons that are unclear.) But most of the time it’s quite snappy.
I too have a couple of apps that don’t show up, and I agree that the interface for adding, moving, and removing apps is somewhat clumsy. But it’s way better than having so many pages of apps!
the greatest benefit of Categories is in fact, it makes you able to have more than 9 pages of Apps on your home screen (which is the limit of the iPhone 144 icons). Otherwise, there is no other ways to go beyond the limit.
I have 32 icons for Callme instant photo dial icons; and with 16 built in Apps, it leaves only little room for extra Apps unless you use Categories.
I also found a little bug after updating to FW 2.2. It can’t automatically hide the Apps after Updating. Any one having the same problem recently?
@Nick Papadakis – Keeping the folders resident does indeed help a lot. We decided to give the app a second go, and we’re much happier with it now, even though some folders occasionally drop from being “resident” and re-introduce a delay every once in awhile.
Upgrading the iPhone’s firmware without first deleting the Categories application introduces a major hassle, however, unless one is okay with setting up the iPhone from scratch. We strongly recommend deleting Categories prior to the 2.2 upgrade, for example, and then reinstalling thereafter.
@SeaPea – We’ve been able to hide apps just fine after the 2.2 upgrade. Are you trying to hide apps that you moved into folders, or that are still on your Springboard?
@WyldKard
I have delete the Categories applications prior to upgrading the iPhone firmware. But I found upgrading several Apps (which are hidden in the folders) leave them on the Home Page instead of hiding automatically. I have to delete it from the Categories, then Add it again to make it hidden into the folders.
This is not the same as in prior versions. Probably I have made some mistakes in deleting some apps, I am not sure.
why is an app was not visible in the list of apps to add to a categories folder?
the problem was that the app’s application folder had the same name as another already in the categories folder (someApplication.app and someApplication.app). categories only wanted to recognize one of them.
using your computer:
unpack your ipa, and change the name of the app’s folder to someApplication2.app
then open up the folder and you find a file with no extension with the same name. change that to someApplication2
also in the folder, open up info.plist and everywhere you see someApplication, change it to someApplication2
repack your ipa, drag and drop into itunes, and synch. now you can add both apps into same categories folder.
rock on
Hi,
I have a problem. I have a 3g iphone on 2.2 FW and use a vista machine. I jailbroke my phone which went fine, then installed a few apps from cydia, one of them being categories. I put a lot of my apps in the categories folder, including the categories app itself.
Well I had a few problems and had to restore my phone with itunes. Anyway, restore went fine, then re jailbroke my phone, which went fine. I then tried to reinstall several apps, which appeared to go fine.
It says that they have been installed, but I cannot see them on the springboard. The apps are the same ones that I had put into categories folders proir to the restore. I did not uninstall categories before the restore, just restored while it was still on my phone and all the apps still in the folders. I fear that this is my problem!
Anyway, I can see options for the apps in the settings app, but cannot see them anywhere on the phone for me to interface with.
HELP – PLEASE!!!!!
I too had that very same issue ….. and your not going to like the answer(s) ……
First try deleting Categories and see if the icons come back….
If not then attempt a backup of the phone, before restoring ….
If the following fails, as it did on my 3G-iPhone, You have to reset and start over
I have an issue that I think is related to categories: I too added more than the 9 pages and had no issues on the prior firmware, but now I can’t seem to every auto-update apps either with Itunes or directly on the phone. Unless I delete an app and then install the newer version, i’m stuck. Anyway know of a fix or explanation?
use poof to unhide your apps
SB Settings and Categories has this feature. I need to understand what process or such runs during update that doesn’t seem to now have permission to overwrite an app. The install process works fine as long as there is no version of the app on the phone.
If you want to navigate a mass of icons, you might want to look into SpringJumps (download from Cydia). It lets you instantly (really) jump to any page of your springboard.
I’ve put all my games in a folder via Categories, but I put SpringJump icons in my dock to jump to a page of lookup apps (I could get there with a few swipes, but this is faster).
Hello! I have version 2.22 of it with iphone 3g firmware 2.2 jailbreak. The problem is that for some wired reasons when i scroll with categories my application, i do NOT see several applications that are indeed visible on the springboard. Any clue???
Puffo
@puffo – are they webclips/safari shortcuts? Special circumstance apps like that won’t show.
For those with the disappearing apps after updating…I reinstalled the categories app, then removed > then went into the BossPref (make sure you install this from Cydia)> Poof! area. the apps that were in the categories folder were listed as “off”. I set them to “on” and all is well
One issue with categories that I have yet to see addressed is the inability to rename the application label once an app is nested inside a folder. Would be nice to be able to have a rename function for individual apps as part of the categories app.
categories basically hide the application and makes a shortcut to the application that is hidden. so just install sbsettings, an app without an icon, it can unhide all those apps hidden by categories.
I have a jail broken iphone and I installed a theme from cydia called Vista Perfection. It said that I had to make categories and put my apps in those folders. I later uninstalled that theme and now my apps are still in those folders. I tried to install vista perfection again to see if the categories app will be there so i ca just fix it but it doesnt come up. I even downloaded Categories separately but it is still not appearing on my spring board…. can anyone help me plllllleaaaaaseee!!
@MS – If you can’t see your applications anymore, get SBSettings. It has a utility to hide/unhide application icons, which may be your problem. Categories hides application icons from the springboard when the applications are moved into folders, so you if you no longer have Categories installed, and your applications are still missing from the springboard, SBSettings should be able to bring them back.
but what if you hid cydia..? then you cant dl sbsettings..
i cant even see the iphone settings icon.. fail
@dboz – This is what happened to us when we upgraded our firmware: our apps remained hidden, and there was no way to access SBSettings or Cydia. In our case, we had to reset the phone and set it up from scratch.
With our current set up, since we have SBSettings installed, even if we were to delete Categories, we could just swipe the top bar to bring up the SBSettings dialogue box, and enter the application that way. If you don’t have that option, though, you can probably get around resetting your phone with some command-line mojo. Do you have OpenSSH installed? Can you FTP into the phone?
If you have a 2G phone and upgrade to 3.0 via Pwnage Tool, install App Flow via the ‘Icy’ downloader and you’ll be able to access all your apps, including Cydia if previously hidden to try any of above…
found this in another forum…..works perfectly to unhide all your ‘categorized’ apps
“Wow Found the easiest Fix to bring back all of your apps.
Settings> General> Restrictions and enable this. This will unhide all your apps. You can then go back and turn restrictions off. After you turn it back off, all of your hidden apps that were in categories will be back on your spring board.”
found this in another forum…..works perfectly to unhide all your ‘categorized’ apps
BRILLIANT!!! It works
Thanks a lot Mark and John, I’m back in business
Yah I use this app but definately careful what I do. I always pull apps out before updating or deleting etc.. I also do not put any vital apps (cydia settings winterboard or even categories itself) into a category. Currently I have Games Media Social, and Tools folders and have no troubles although as someone mentioned, I keep my speed essential apps out of the folder.
I found a workaround to speed up loading without backgrounder. this workaround removes the annoying loading window.
1. Install any Winterboard Theme
2. Open any category folder and press on the “i ” at the bottom.
3. Under icon theme, select the just installed Theme.
4. Uninstall the theme and reboot
Result: No loading window, fast open
iphone 3GS 32. No categories is a PITA. Nokia have had this for years on their crusty old symbian OS, so why can’t apple? I have over 300 apps and 20+ pages which are a total pain to manage, I can’t even easily herd them all into ‘per page categories’ as the >11page “hack” disallows sync with itunes. Also 20+ pages slows down the app page scrolling considerably and so it is understandable that the jb app categories does so too… and anything is better than not having categories/folders. Shame on apple… 100000 apps and you can’t put on more than 176? Apple treats the consumer with contempt.
Yo
Seems like people having trouble unhiding their icon, I’m the opposite and having serious truoble hiding them. I’ve got 3.1.2 3GS and the Spirit Jailbreak. Installed Categories and SBsettings and even though I’ve added apps to folders, hid them in Categories they are still on my springboard. Tried to hide them in SBsettings, still there, tried to hide in both Categories and SBsettings, still there…wtf I’m I doing wrong. Been cruising around the net for hours and hours and still haven’t found anything yet.
Anyone here got any suggestions??
you could install “CategoriesSB” which will speed things up.
Comment by linking this page in a tweet. Or, tweet @WyldKard.
{ 1 trackback }