Samsung’s One UI has come a long way, but even the best software can’t stop a home screen from becoming a chaotic mess over time. Looking at my Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, some home screen pages were cluttered beyond repair while others sat entirely empty. I decided to wipe the slate clean and rebuild my layout from scratch.

Get rid of all the unnecessary home screen pages

Start with a blank slate

The Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra boasts a huge screen, and the last thing you need is sixty different apps staring back at you on the home screen. To start off, get rid of all the home screens except one. This can be achieved by long-pressing the empty spaces on the home screen and deleting every other home screen page.

After that, I manually deleted all the app shortcuts, widgets, and folders from the remaining home screen pages until I was left with nothing but a clean wallpaper. To be clear, I didn’t uninstall the applications. I simply restricted them from being visible on my home screen.

From here on, you can add as many blank home screen pages as you need before you start adding app shortcuts and widgets from scratch.

Choose Between Larger Icons and More Shortcuts

Optimize the grid size based on your preference

Before adding any app shortcuts and widgets, you need to adjust the grid settings. The home screen grid determines how rows and columns of app icons and widgets interact and whether your layout looks clean or scattered. I wanted my home screen to display large icons instead of cramming a plethora of apps.

I tapped on the home screen, opened the layout configuration panel, and selected the 6×5 grid option. This specific setting is optimal if you want large-sized icons with enough spacing while also making use of the extra screen real estate that you get with a large Android tablet.

Disable Android from automatically adding apps to your home screen

Many Android devices add recently installed apps to the home screen by default.

When you download a new app on Android, the system usually creates an app shortcut icon in the first available space on your home screen. As time passes, this can mess up your home screen aesthetic and make it extremely hard to find the apps that you actually need while navigating through a bunch of apps that you rarely use.

To restrict the UI from cluttering your workspace, long-press any space on your home screen, tap the Settings icon at the bottom of the pop-up menu, and look for the option labeled “Add new apps to Home screen.” Toggle this switch off, and any future apps you download from the Google Play Store or Galaxy Store will go straight to your App Drawer without creating unwanted icons on your display.

Rarely used apps can be removed from the home screen

The best way to design your home screens is by giving priority to the app shortcuts and widgets that you actually use frequently and then considering the need to create shortcuts for other apps. If you don’t interact with an application multiple times a day, it has no business sitting in the most accessible region of the home screen. On One UI, users can swipe up to open the Apps screen, long-press any app, and select Add to Home. You can then drag the icon wherever you want, including to another Home screen.

I placed only essential apps on the main screen, such as MX Player, Chrome, Netflix, YouTube, among others. Everything else stayed in the App Drawer. I followed the same philosophy with widgets. Long-pressing an empty area and tapping Widgets brings up the full widget library, and I could choose the widget I wanted to add directly to the Home screen.

Samsung also lets you choose the size of the widgets, resize compatible widgets, and adjust settings such as colors, which helped me make them fit neatly into the layout. If you wish to add more apps to your home screen pages, you can drag one app on top of the other to create folders. You can also stack widgets of the same size directly on top of another widget.

One UI allows you to add app shortcuts to your Taskbar.

The taskbar can be accessed from within an app

Samsung’s Taskbar feature is a game changer for tablets and foldables. Recent versions of One UI not only allow you to add app shortcuts to your app drawer but also to the Taskbar. What this essentially means is that the bottom dock of your home screen is visible even when you are using an application or browsing the internet.

This changed my entire layout strategy. Instead of cluttering the center of my screen with apps such as Gmail, Samsung Notes, Spotify, and the Camera app, I dragged these essential daily drivers down into the persistent dock.

The ability to check your emails and play music while in the middle of performing a task without the need to go back to your home screen is an extremely understated feature that really sweetens the experience. Make sure to carefully choose the apps for the taskbar, and you’ll be better off for it.

One UI gives you all the tools to declutter your home screen

While rebuilding your home screen will take a little bit of initial effort, it will significantly improve your user experience on a day-to-day basis. The best part is you don’t need to download a third-party launcher to fix your home screen. By following a few simple steps and analyzing the importance of each app, you can easily redesign your home screen.

At the end of the day, a massive tablet screen is meant to feel like a natural extension of your workflow, not an obstacle course. So if you’re someone who feels like your home screen is cluttered with a bunch of rarely used app shortcuts and widgets, take the time to rebuild it from scratch.