When you download a lot of apps on your phone or tablet, they can often be frustratingly hard to find.
Sometimes, your home screen gets so cluttered that you prefer to delete some of the home screen app shortcuts and keep them in the app drawer.
However, if you have a lot of apps, finding apps in the app drawer when you need them can be difficult or take too much time.
One of the easiest ways to find apps is to sort them in alphabetical order, but what if they aren’t sorted that way?
This guide will show you how to organize your apps in alphabetical order on your Samsung. I will also be giving you some additional tips you can use to sort and organize your apps on your Samsung phone or tablet.
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How to Organize Your Apps in Your App Tray in Alphabetical Order?
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To start, you’ll need to access the app drawer, also called the app tray. The app tray is where all of your apps are shown, allowing you to navigate to any app that you have installed on your phone and open it.
A lot of people don’t realize that Android phones and tablets have an app drawer. They think that you can only access your apps from the home screen, but that is not the case.
The apps on your home screen are actually shortcuts.
The home screen is best for organizing your most-used apps, so you can easily access them. To avoid cluttering your home screen, I recommend only adding shortcuts to the apps you use the most.
In any case, to get to your app tray, you can simply swipe down from the top of your screen. On some phones, you will need to swipe up from the bottom of your screen instead.
Many devices also have an “Apps” icon that opens up the app tray.
This icon will usually be located at the bottom of the screen, next to your Phone, Messages, and other important “favorite” apps. It will typically have nine dots inside, as shown in the following image.
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Photo by MOHI SYED: Pexels
However, if you can’t find an icon labeled “Apps,” just swipe down from the top of your screen or swipe up from the bottom.
Once you are there, you will notice three small dots at the top right of the screen, next to the search bar.
Don’t click on the search bar. The search bar allows you to search for a specific app and quickly navigate to it, but for our article, we are interested in this three-dot menu.
When you click on it, you will see several options.
The one we want is “Display Layout” or “Sort.” The exact option you will see will depend on your device model.
Once you click on “Display Layout” or “Sort,” you will see an option for “Alphabetical List” or “Alphabetical Order.” Again, the precise wording may vary from one device model to another.
Click on it, and the apps in your app tray will automatically be sorted in alphabetical order, so you can find them easily.
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Photo by Pixabay: Pexels
Two other options you may see are to arrange them in a vertical grid or a horizontal grid, but we’re not interested in those options.
On some devices, you may not see vertical or horizontal grid options. Instead, you might see a “Custom Order” option.
That allows you to sort your apps in any way you like. You can sort them so that the more commonly used apps are at the top of the list, or you can sort them by color.
On some devices, you may simply see an “A-Z” option at the top of the screen for sorting apps in alphabetical order, as shown in the following image.
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Photo by MOHI SYED: Pexels
Note that on some Android devices, the apps in the app tray are automatically sorted in alphabetical order. You may not find a three-dot menu in that case.
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How to Organize Your Apps On Your Home Screen?
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The best way to organize your apps on your home screen, if it gets too cluttered, is to create folders for them.
A lot of people don’t realize that they can create custom folders on their home screen, name those folders, and add or remove apps from those folders. That’s why you have people with dozens of home screen pages, full of clutter.
To create a folder on your home screen, just long-press on any app, drag it around, and drop it on another app. A new folder with both of those apps inside will automatically be created.
You can then drag and drop other app icons into the app folder you just created.
By default, the folder will be named “Folder name” or something of that sort, but you can change the name.
Simply open the folder. At the top, where it says “Folder name,” click on the “Folder” text, and you will be able to type in a new name.
For example, you can create one folder called Productivity, another called Social, and another called Entertainment.
Personally, I created a folder called Social for WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms. In my Entertainment folder, I put Spotify, Netflix, and other entertainment apps.
In my Education folder, I put Duolingo, Notion (a note-taking app), Udemy, and other apps that help me expand my knowledge. I also created a Finances folder for my banking and budget-tracking apps.
Another cool thing you can do is change the color of the folder. Open the folder and look for a small circle at the top-right of the folder.
Click on it to change the color palette. That can easily help you find a folder.
For example, you can have a blue color palette for your social media folder and a red one for your banking apps.
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Image credit: Samsung
Samsung phones usually come loaded with the Samsung folder, where you will find your pre-installed Samsung apps. You may also see other default folders, such as a Google folder for YouTube, Google Maps, and other Google apps.
However, you can always rename those folders, delete them, or change which apps are inside.
To move an app from one folder to another, simply open the folder, long press on the app, and drag it to the new folder you want it to be in.
On Samsung devices, you may also create folders in the Apps tray. Once you do that, you can add a shortcut to the folder to your home screen, so that the folder is visible from both your home screen and the app tray.
I’ve seen too many people with unnecessary clutter on their home screen. On some devices, when you install a new app, a new shortcut is automatically added to the home screen, in addition to the app being shown in the app tray.
If your existing home screen pages are already full, a new page/screen will be added, which you can access by swiping left.
So, whenever you install a new app, I highly encourage you to either drag that new app to a folder or to delete the shortcut from your home screen, to avoid clutter.
You can also delete app shortcuts from your home screen by long-pressing on an app icon. Note that deleting a shortcut from the home screen is not the same as uninstalling the app; the app will still be accessible from your app drawer.
Of course, you also have the option to turn off this setting. If you don’t want your phone to automatically add app shortcuts to your home screen every time you install a new app, there is a way to stop it from doing so.
However, it’s not entirely intuitive at first. There used to be a way to do it from the Play Store settings, but this is no longer the case.
Instead, you will need to go to your home screen settings. The way to access them is to long press anywhere on your home screen (but not on an app or folder).
Then, on the bottom, you will see some options, such as widgets and wallpaper settings. Look for the “Settings” option, and click on it.
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Image credit: Samsung
Note: On some devices, you will have to click on “More” instead of “Settings.”
Look for the setting that says, “Add apps to home screen” or “Add app icons to home screen.” You may see a small message under it explaining that this option is for adding newly downloaded apps to the home screen.
Toggle it off. From now on, when you install a new app, it will NOT be added to the home screen. Instead, if you want to add it to the home screen, you will have to find it in your app tray and drag and drop it onto the home screen.
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How to Move Your Samsung Apps to Your SD Card?
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If you want to save space on your phone, you can move some things to an SD card, if your phone supports it.
Fewer and fewer phones nowadays support SD cards, and the reason for that is simple. Cloud storage services such as Google Photos, Google Drive, and Dropbox have been becoming increasingly popular, and depending on your plan, you can upload a lot of media to your cloud storage.
For example, Google currently offers 15 GB of free storage. It also offers 100 GB of storage at just $1.99/month and 200 GB of storage at just $2.99/month.
If you need more storage, you can get 2 TB of storage for just $9.99/month. See here for updated pricing.
Now, consider how much storage can be kept on an SD card (hint: it’s not a lot). SD cards usually come with 32, 64, or 128 GB of storage space.
While some SD cards can support more than that, it can be pretty expensive, and your phone might not support that much extra storage.
One thing that cloud storage doesn’t help with is the ability to clear apps from your phone. While you can upload your photos and documents to the cloud, you can’t store your apps in the cloud.
However, you can move apps to an SD card, freeing up space on your phone to download even more apps than previously possible!
It’s important to note, though, that some apps are designed to work from your internal storage only, so you can’t add them to an SD card.
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Paowee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Here is how to add apps to your SD card.
First, go to the app drawer. Then, look for the Settings app. You may also have a Settings app icon on your home screen.
Click on Apps. There, you will see a list of apps.
Find the app you want to move to your SD card. Click on it.
Next, click on “Storage.” Under “Storage Used,” click on “Change.”
Then, switch the location from your internal storage to your SD card in the pop-up that appears.
If you don’t see this option, it simply means that the app can only work from your internal storage.
Of course, you will need an SD card first. Most phones will not come with one, even if they support one.
When buying an SD card, make sure you are buying the right type. Most phones that support SD cards support a microSD card.
However, some older phones and tablets will require a larger, miniSD card.
Remember, this just refers to the card’s form factor, not to its storage space. Just because it’s bigger, that doesn’t mean it can support more storage.
If your phone doesn’t support an SD card, you’re not out of luck. What you can do instead is upload your photos and files to the cloud, such as Google Photos, and then use the extra space to install apps.
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Wrapping It Up
Sorting your apps in alphabetical order isn’t really difficult. Just go to your app drawer and use the three-dot menu to do it.
In addition, I would recommend creating folders on your home screen for organizational purposes.
You can also move apps to your SD card if you feel that you have too many apps and they are taking up too much space in your phone’s internal storage. However, it’s only possible if your phone supports an SD card.
