You can’t edit your Apple Vision Pro home screen: visionOS apps are arranged alphabetically

Apple Vision Pro launches this Friday, Apple’s first entrance into the AR/VR headset market. While it has a lot of bells and whistles, it’s also worth remembering that this is very much the first version of a first-generation device … and there will be weird constraints and limitations.

One such limit is that the Vision Pro home screen of apps is not organizable in visionOS 1.0. As noted by Brian Tong in his video review, the system currently does not let the user reorder their grid of apps …

Rather than allowing users to drag and drop apps into whatever position they like, the layout is fixed. Each page of the home screen can shows 13 apps in total, in a grid layout.

The first page consists of Apple’s apps; TV, Music, Mindfulness, Settings, Freeform, Safari, Photos, Notes, App Store, Mail, Messages, and Keynote. A system-provided Compatible Apps folder is also present on the first page, which contains all the non-native iPadOS apps from the App Store.

From the second page onwards, you see all the third-party visionOS apps you have installed. These visionOS apps are simply listed alphabetically and cannot be rearranged.

You can navigate between pages by swiping with your hand. But if your favorite apps start with letters at the back half of the alphabet, there’s currently no way to move them to the first or second page to make accessing them more convenient. You also can’t make folders to group related apps together.

Another potential thing to be aware of is that you cannot create home screen icons for websites. The ‘Add to Home Screen’ button in Safari is simply not present on visionOS at the moment.

These basic omissions are unfortunate, and are a reminder of this being a 1.0 operating system on a 1.0 device. Expect Apple to address some of these shortcomings in future software updates.