My home screen setup has been the same for ages. This year, I decided to give it a complete revamp and share with you my top three home screen setups for your Google Pixel in 2026. So, without further ado, let's jump in to show you how I will revamp my Google Pixel home screen setup. On the left, I have the layout that I've been using for ages, and on the right, a completely blank home screen to give you a step-by-step guide on how to make it. so much better. The first thing you need to do is to remove the at a glance widget from your home screen, which is only possible on the beta versions of Android 16 starting from QPR3 beta 1 and later or Android Canary 2512 and later. So, if you are running the stable version of Android 16 and still don't have the ability to remove the at a glance widget, the home screen setup I'm going to show you will look great either way.
But let's remove it for the sake of this video on my Pixel 10 Pro XL running Android 16 QPR3 beta 2. And when you tap and hold on the widget and then go to settings, you will see a toggle called show on home screen. Once you turn off the switch, it will be completely removed. We still don't have the ability to remove the Google search widget which is a bummer.
But let's wait and see if Google will also give us the option to do this in future updates. And now let's move on to the second step which is picking the wallpaper. All the wallpapers I will use in this video are part of the wallpapers by in-depth thick reviews app which is available for download on Google Play Store using the link in the description. And the first wallpaper I will use is called patterns 93 which you can find over here. Or you can use the search functionality and type 93 and it will appear right away. You can also add it to your favorites to get back to it at any time. Or you can also jump to the patterns category and you will see all the patterns wallpapers over here.
So let's pick this one and set it on my home screen by tapping on it. Then set it for the lock and home screen and turn on the fit wallpaper to center to avoid any scrolling while moving between your home screen pages. Now it's time to organize my home screen apps and widgets. And here I want to achieve three main things. First, I need a minimal design that looks aesthetically pleasing and all the apps to be reachable with one hand. After a lot of thinking, here is the design I came up with. First, I have the home screen layout set to the small option or 5×5 if you are running the older versions of Android 16. That will give you five apps per row, but I will only put three in the center to make things easier to reach. Plus, it looks a lot better. Now, let me add the most important apps that I use daily to my home screen.
And here, I will fast forward the video to avoid wasting your time. Here's the first look at my home screen. After adding the most important apps I use daily, I decided to go with a 3×3 grid and place it at the bottom half of the screen to make all the apps reachable. Then I merged all my doc apps into one folder which is also centered. I can also put only three apps in the dock to match my home screen grid. But because I need four apps, I decided to create this folder. And to me, it looks great. So please let me know what do you think in the comments.
One more thing to add to the home screen to make it look even better is to go to the widgets, then browse. And I decided to choose one of the clock designs, which is this one. Let's tap on add. And I will also center the clock. And here is the final look at the first page of my home screen. Let me also show you how it looks with the dark theme enabled. The blacked out icons and widgets work really well with the colors of this wallpaper. In the channels wallpaper app, you will also find similar options that looks nice with this new design. And here's one of the recommended options. It's called patterns 75. Here's another option, and I like this one because the pattern is aligned with the grid.
Plus, you can remove the folder names if the text is overlapping with the wallpaper. So when I remove the folder names like this, it looks even better and aesthetically more pleasing. This wallpaper is called patterns 61. But let me also show you some of the best options I came up with that works really well with this design. Let me pause for a minute to thank you for the time you gave to me to learn about these software features because time is my biggest enemy while making these videos.
I have to be fast and as detailed as possible to meet your expectations. But with the growing number of software features every single day, things are not as easy as it used to be. So I needed a time management tool. But the number of tools available out there is crazy. After a long time of research, I ended up using a couple of tools in addition to my email and calendar combo. But the more the tools, the more the effort and time needed to keep things in line.
So, what if I told you you can merge all of this into one easy to use tool? Meet AIFlow, the one app for tasks and calendars powered by AI. First, you can link up to 32 services, including your Gmail or Outlook email. So, if you already invested your time in any of these tools, you don't need to start over. You can simply get access to all of them in one place. To show you how it works, I connected all the services I use to a flow. By this, all the tasks I added manually, the ones synchronized from other services, and my flagged emails are all on the left, while my calendar is on the right. Using the time blocking technique, I can just drag and drop tasks and emails to my calendar to assign a time block for each one. Now I'm on top of everything and know exactly what I need to finish and when by just looking at one screen. You can also download the AIFlow app on your iPhone or Android to manage things on the go or add tasks once they come to your mind to avoid losing track or forgetting about them.
Another cool trick is the ability to create tasks and events by just emailing them to akiaklow.com or you can BCC this email address in your replies to seamlessly create tasks for these specific emails without the need to flag them later. If you want to try a flow right now, use the link in the description or the pinned comment. And now let's get back to the video. By this I'm done with the first setup. And here's the second one. This time I will use this wallpaper which is called featured 27 in the wallpapers by in-depth tech reviews app.
But as you see it doesn't work nicely with my home screen setup because the apps and widgets are covering the main subject. To solve this problem you can do two things. First go to the wallpaper and style app. Tap on your home screen. Then tap on it again and push the wallpaper all the way to the left and set it again from scratch like this. Once done, go back to the home screen and push all the app icons and widgets to the right side to stay away from the main subject.
Unfortunately, Google doesn't give us an option to multi select apps to make this process easier. So, you have to do this one by one. So, let me finish moving all the apps and then I will finally move the clock to the side. And here is how it looks. As you see, the main subject is now completely visible, and that makes my home screen look so much better.
Also, I can add a couple of folders on those two empty spots. I will use the email and banking folders to fill in the gaps. And here is the final look in case the subject or the wallpaper doesn't fit with the centered layout I showed you earlier. Here's another good example for the same setup. The subject is already on the left side. So once you set the wallpaper and make the clock slightly smaller like this, it will look great. The third and last setup I will show you in this video features a wallpaper called Abstract 21 from the wallpapers by in-depth thick reviews app. And the reason I chose this wallpaper because it has two separate sections so I can organize my apps and widgets in a way that complements the wallpaper design and that will make it aesthetically more pleasing.
This is just the initial design but you can make it so much better by adding some extra widgets. So I will start by adding the at a glance widget of the Google app which looks a lot better when compared to the native at a glance widget of the home screen. I also prefer this outlined design and here is how it looks. Then I use the battery widget daily. So I will also add this one to my home screen like this. Then I want to add the Google Home widget to turn my smart lights on or off.
So I will choose favorites, make it smaller, and put the apps back again to their original position. And finally, I will change the clock design to something else that fits the wallpaper more. And here's the final look. I really love how this setup looks as it covers all the guidelines I set at the beginning of the video. Anything that you need to tap on is reachable. It has a minimal design and it complements the wallpaper design which makes it aesthetically pleasing. So, these are my top three home screen setups for your Google Pixel. So, please let me know in the comments what do you think. Make sure to download the wallpapers by in-depth tech reviews app using the link in the description to get access to all the wallpapers you've seen in this video.
But for now, thanks so much for watching and see you in the next.
