Can I stop my home-screen icons moving?
Q
I have a recurring problem with the home page on my Motorola smartphone. With no apparent prompt or warning, it shifts the icons on to another page. I’m at an advanced stage in my life, and can neither see nor manipulate quite so well these days, so I find this difficult to rectify. Is there a way to lock the icons, because I rarely change them? I’ve looked for a solution but without luck. If anyone knows how to do this, I am sure it’s your crew. The phone is about three years old and runs Android 7. Keep up the good work, and I will continue to attempt to understand at least some of it! Alan Orchard
A
Android doesn’t have a specific option for locking icons, although some smartphone manufacturers – such as Samsung – have customised the operating system to offer such a feature. However, that’s not the case with Motorola, nor of the more or less ‘stock’ version of Android 7 that your phone is almost certainly running.
However, one possible solution is to modify one of the accessibility settings to make this situation less likely to occur. The problem is that ‘long pressing’ a home-screen icon puts Android into rearrange mode, so you can then drag and drop icons to different places. If you’re a bit slower than you used to be, Android may interpret your ‘normal’ tap as a long press. Increasing the delay trigger will make it less likely that you will accidentally move your icons.
To do this, launch Settings then tap Accessibility. Next, under the Interaction Controls heading, tap ‘Touch & hold delay’ (see screenshot 1 ). Finally, tap to select the Long option (see 2 ) – and hopefully your home-screen icons will stay put.