Tech for Beginners Part 4: Home Screen, Notifications and Quick Settings, Finding Your Way Around

Your new phone is set up, the home screen is staring back at you, and now there are icons everywhere, little pop-ups at the top of the screen and a mysterious panel that slides down when your finger slips. Do not worry. This is Part 4 of our Tech for Beginners series, and today we will learn how to find your way around: the home screen, the list of all your apps, the notification panel, the quick settings switches, and the search box that can find any setting in seconds.

If you have just bought your phone, first read Part 2: How to Set Up a New Android Phone or Part 3: How to Set Up a New iPhone. If words like "icon", "swipe" or "app" still feel new, Part 1: Smartphone Basics, Parts and Key Terms explains them simply.

A quick note before we start: Android phones from Samsung, Xiaomi (Redmi), Vivo, Oppo, Realme, OnePlus and Motorola all look a little different, and both Android and iPhone menus change with software updates. So the exact names and positions on your phone may differ slightly from what you read here. The ideas, though, stay the same everywhere.

The five places you will use every day

Almost everything you do on a smartphone happens in one of these five places. Once you know them, the phone stops feeling confusing.

1. The home screen: the main screen you see after unlocking. It holds your favourite app icons and widgets. You can have several home screen pages side by side.
2. The app drawer (Android) or App Library (iPhone): the full list of every app installed on your phone, including ones not on the home screen.
3. The notification panel: the list of alerts from your apps, such as WhatsApp messages, UPI payment confirmations, missed calls and OTPs.
4. Quick Settings (Android) or Control Centre (iPhone): a panel of on/off switches for Wi-Fi, mobile data, Bluetooth, torch, brightness and more.
5. The Settings app: the gear-shaped icon where every option on the phone lives, with a search box at the top.

Finding your way around an Android phone

Home screen and the app drawer

Swipe left or right on the home screen to move between pages. To see all your apps:

1. Go to the home screen by pressing the Home button or swiping up from the bottom edge.
2. Swipe up from the middle or bottom of the home screen. A full list of apps appears, usually in alphabetical order. This is the app drawer.
3. Use the search bar at the top of the app drawer to type an app's name, for example "PhonePe" or "Camera".

On some phones, especially some Xiaomi and older Samsung models, there may be no app drawer by default and every app sits on the home screen pages instead. You can usually turn the drawer on under Settings, then Home screen. The option name varies by brand.

Notification panel and Quick Settings

1. Swipe down once from the top edge of the screen. You will see your notifications and a short row of Quick Settings switches.
2. Swipe down a second time (or swipe down with two fingers) to open the full Quick Settings panel with more switches and a brightness slider.
3. Tap a switch to turn it on or off. A coloured or highlighted tile usually means "on".
4. Touch and hold a tile, for example Wi-Fi, to jump straight to its full settings page.
5. Swipe up, or press the Back button, to close the panel.

On some Xiaomi, Realme and Oppo phones, swiping down from the top-left shows notifications and swiping down from the top-right shows the control panel. Try both corners if things look different.

Customise your Quick Settings

1. Open the full Quick Settings panel (swipe down twice).
2. Look for a pencil icon, an "Edit" button or a three-dot menu, then tap it.
3. Drag the tiles you use most, such as Torch, Mobile data and Hotspot, to the top. Drag the ones you never use to the lower section.
4. Tap Done or press Back to save.

Finding your way around an iPhone

Home screen, App Library and Today View

1. Swipe up from the bottom edge to go home (on iPhones with a Home button, press it).
2. Swipe left through your home screen pages. After the last page, you reach the App Library, which sorts every app into folders such as Social or Productivity, with a search bar at the top.
3. Swipe right from the first home screen page to open Today View, a page of widgets such as weather, calendar and battery.

Notification Centre and Control Centre

1. Notification Centre: swipe down from the top middle or top-left of the screen to see your recent notifications.
2. Control Centre on iPhones with Face ID (no Home button): swipe down from the top-right corner.
3. Control Centre on iPhones with a Home button: swipe up from the bottom edge.
4. Tap a control to turn it on or off. Touch and hold a group, such as the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth block, to see more options.

Rearranging apps on the home screen

A tidy home screen saves time every day. Put the apps you use most, such as WhatsApp, your UPI app, Phone and Camera, on the first page.

On Android

1. Touch and hold an app icon until a small menu appears or the icon lifts up.
2. Without lifting your finger, drag it to a new spot. Drag it to the edge of the screen to move it to the next page.
3. To make a folder, drag one icon on top of another. Give the folder a name like "Money" or "Shopping".
4. To remove an icon from the home screen without deleting the app, touch and hold it and choose "Remove" (not "Uninstall").

On iPhone

1. Touch and hold an empty part of the home screen until the icons start to jiggle. (You can also touch and hold an app and choose "Edit Home Screen".)
2. Drag icons to new places. Drag one onto another to create a folder.
3. To take an icon off the home screen without deleting it, tap the minus (−) sign on the icon and choose "Remove from Home Screen". The app stays in the App Library.
4. Tap Done in the top-right corner when you have finished.

Careful: on both systems, "Delete App" or "Uninstall" removes the app and can remove its data too. If you only want a cleaner screen, choose the "Remove" option instead.

Adding helpful widgets

A widget is a small live window from an app that sits on your home screen, such as the weather, a clock, your calendar or battery levels. Widgets show information without opening the app.

Add a widget on Android

1. Touch and hold an empty space on the home screen.
2. Tap Widgets.
3. Scroll or search for the widget you want, for example Clock or Weather.
4. Touch and hold the widget, then drag it onto your home screen. Some widgets let you resize them by dragging their edges.

Add a widget on iPhone

1. Touch and hold an empty area of the home screen until the icons jiggle.
2. Tap Edit or the plus (+) button at the top, then Add Widget. The wording depends on your iOS version.
3. Choose a widget, pick a size, and tap Add Widget.
4. Drag it into place and tap Done.

Silencing noisy notifications

Notifications are useful for messages, bank alerts and OTPs, but shopping, game and news apps can send dozens a day. Here is how to keep the important ones and quieten the rest.

The quick way: straight from the notification

1. When an annoying notification appears, open the notification panel.
2. On Android, touch and hold the notification (or swipe it slightly sideways and tap the gear icon). On iPhone, swipe the notification left and tap Options.
3. Choose to turn off notifications for that app, make them silent, or mute them for an hour or a day (the choices differ by phone).

The thorough way: from Settings

1. Android: open Settings, tap Notifications, then App notifications. Turn off apps you do not need alerts from. Tap an app to control individual types, for example keep order updates but turn off offers.
2. iPhone: open Settings, tap Notifications, tap the app, and switch off Allow Notifications, or keep them on but change how and where they appear.

What to keep on

• Your bank and UPI apps, so you know immediately when money leaves your account.
• Messages and SMS, because OTPs arrive there.
• Phone calls and WhatsApp, or whichever messaging app your family uses.

Keeping bank alerts on is also a safety habit. If a payment you did not make ever shows up, you can act quickly. Our guide to common online scams in India explains what to watch for.

Do Not Disturb and Focus

For meetings, prayer time or sleep, use Do Not Disturb. On Android, it is a tile in Quick Settings. On iPhone, open Control Centre and tap Focus, then Do Not Disturb or Sleep. Both systems let you allow calls from chosen people, such as parents or children, even when everything else is silent. Look for this under Settings, then Notifications or Focus, then People.

Finding any setting with search

This is the single most useful trick in this article. You do not need to remember where a setting lives. Just search for it.

1. Open the Settings app (the gear icon).
2. Tap the search bar or magnifying glass at the top. On some iPhones, you may need to pull the Settings list down slightly to reveal it.
3. Type a simple word, such as "font size", "ringtone", "hotspot", "dark mode" or "storage".
4. Tap the matching result to jump straight to that setting.

You can also search the whole phone. On iPhone, swipe down from the middle of the home screen to open Search. On many Android phones, there is a search bar on the home screen or at the top of the app drawer.

If search shows that your storage is nearly full, our guide on how to free up storage on Android and iPhone will help.

Five settings worth finding today

1. Text size: search "font size" or "text size" to make words bigger and easier to read.
2. Brightness: use the slider in Quick Settings or Control Centre, and consider turning on automatic brightness.
3. Dark mode: search "dark" to turn on a darker look that some people find easier on the eyes at night.
4. Ringtone and volume: search "sound" or "ringtone" to change how loud and how your phone rings.
5. Screen timeout or Auto-Lock: search "screen timeout" (Android) or "Auto-Lock" (iPhone) to choose how quickly the screen turns off.

Frequently asked questions

I swiped down and my screen is covered with switches. How do I get out?

That is the Quick Settings or Control Centre panel. Swipe up, press Back on Android, or tap an empty area. Nothing has been changed unless you tapped a switch.

An app disappeared from my home screen. Did I delete it?

Probably not. On Android, open the app drawer and search for it. On iPhone, swipe to the App Library and search. If it is there, touch and hold it and drag it back to the home screen.

Will turning off notifications stop my OTPs?

Only if you turn off notifications for your Messages or SMS app, so keep that one on. Turning off alerts for shopping or game apps does not affect OTPs.

Why does my phone look different from the steps here?

Each brand adds its own design on top of Android, and Apple changes iOS every year. If a menu name does not match, use the search box in Settings and type what you are looking for.

What is next

Practise for ten minutes today: open the notification panel, rearrange your first home screen page, add one widget and search for "font size". In the next part of Tech for Beginners, we will learn how to install, update and remove apps safely using the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Featured image: "Hands-coffee-smartphone-technology" by www.Pixel.la Free Stock Photos, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (public domain dedication).