Navigating Home Screens and Features
You’ll use the gestures that you just learned to open apps, read long web pages, navigate with maps, enjoy movies, and open controls. Let’s go over the basic—but critical—navigation skills you need to get around on your device.
Getting to Home Screen pages
The Home Screen is what you see when you aren’t using an app. The Home screen is kind of like the desktop on a Windows or Mac computer. As you add apps to your device, you’ll add more Home Screen pages. To reach a Home Screen on a device without a Home button, swipe up from the bottom of the device. If you have a device with a Home button, press it to reach the Home Screen.
You’ll first go to the last Home Screen you were on. To get to your “main” Home Screen, swipe up a second time or press the Home button a second time.
Home Screens: Going from page to page
Swipe a finger left from the main Home Screen to advance to the next Home Screen page. Swipe right to back up to the prior Home Screen page.
Opening the Search feature
You can easily find things on the web and nearly anything on your phone using the Search feature. Swipe down from the middle area of any Home Screen, and the Search box will appear at the top of the page.
The Today View
Swipe right from the main Home Screen (as far right as you can go) to open the Today View.
Open the App Library
The App Library is the rightmost page from the Home Screen pages. Swipe left until you find the App Library.
Using the App Switcher
The App Switcher makes it easy to switch between apps you have used recently with a simple swipe of your finger. You can check your calendar while you are on a phone call, answer a text message while watching YouTube, or quickly switch between any open apps. When you switch to an app, you’ll pick up right where you left off. To open the App Switcher:
- On iPhone X or later, swipe up from the bottom edge to the center of the screen and pause. Swipe right to view open apps. Tap an app to open.
- On an iPhone with a physical Home button, double-click the Home button to open the app switcher. Swipe right to view open apps. Tap an app to open.
You can force-close an app from the App Switcher by touching and dragging it to the top of your screen.
Viewing notifications
Swipe down from the middle top edge of your screen to open notifications.
Opening the Control Center
Swipe down from the right-side top edge of your screen to open the Control Center.
To bring items to the bottom half of your screen
Apps can be hard to reach on a larger screen, especially when using only one hand. iOS has a feature called Reachability that you can use to bring the contents of the screen down to the lower half. Swipe down on the bottom edge of the screen or lightly double tap the Home button. You have to turn Reachability on in Settings 
> Accessibility > Touch to use this feature.
You should practice these navigation skills until you are quite familiar with them. You’ll use them often with any Apple mobile device