Review: Categories (Organize Your SpringBoard)
by Nic Elder
September 8, 2008
Categories 2.11 | Published by BigBoss | Via Cydia | Free | Released:
9-08-08
Overview
On my Macbook I'm accustomed to organizing all of my downloads, applications, and garbage into folders that keep my desktop nice and clean. Since forever, I've been wondering why Apple didn't allow for folders on the iPhone's SpringBoard. All Windows Mobile phones allow you to create folders for your start menu items, so why wouldn't Apple? Thanks to BigBoss, we now have a solution. Categories is an intuitive, simple application that lets you create folders to organize all of your SpringBoard icons.
Functionality
After downloading Categories from Cydia and tapping on the icon to launch it, you're presented with a basic list style interface. From the main screen you can remove existing folders, add a new folder, or restart the SpringBoard.
Adding Categories is easy. Simply tap 'Add' on the top right corner and enter the name of the folder you wish to add. For this example we'll use "Games." After typing the name of the folder, you are presented with a large gallery of folder icons to select from. There are a lot of different colors and styles to match your existing iPhone theme.
After adding a folder you are taken to the editing screen for the folder you just created. From here you can add icons that are currently on your SpringBoard by tapping the 'Add' button on the top right. Selecting an application from the list will remove the icon from the SpringBoard and add it to your newly created "Games" folder.
Note: You may also add folders to new folders. This means you could further organize your games by, say, genre if you so desired.
After adding as many folders as you want, and filling those folders with your icons, simply go back to the main screen and tap 'Restart SpringBoard' to reload the SpringBoard and use your new folders.
You can easily remove icons from your folder by going to the folder edit screen and tapping the minus (-) next to the icon you wish to remove. Removing an icon from a folder, or removing a folder from Categories will cause all of the icons in that folder to reappear on the SpringBoard after a restart.
Summary
Categories allowed me to take all 5 screens of my icons and organize them in an efficient way on one SpringBoard. The only downfall to using the Categories application is that when tapping on a folder it actually has to load an application to display the icons within the folder. This loading can take 3-5 seconds and is a minor annoyance if you are not the type to display some patience. I'm hoping that BigBoss can rectify this by adding some sort of background process in the future, but the minor annoyance for me is worth the great functionality I get from this app.
Try it for yourself
Usability: 5 / 5
Value: 4 / 5
Utility: 4 / 5
Aesthetics: 5 / 5
Overall Rating: 4.5 / 5
