When I stopped using Gingerbread OS (2.3.6) and I got a new phone running Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.4), I found out that any time I install an app from the market, the app will automatically add its widget or icon to my Home screens or Desktops. This auto insertion of icon and widgets continued until my whole screen got filled by them, Android even told me that there is no space remaining in my homescreen! 🙂 It isn’t funny anyway because I keep on deleting unwanted icons and widgets from my Home screen (you can do this by long pressing the icon and drag it to the ‘Remove icon’) because I must customize my Home screen the way I want it -My own way 😉

When I got tired of this frequent editing of my Home screen, I decided to turn off this auto insertion or addition of icons and widgets in my Home screen. Unfortunately some thing close to it was no where to be found in the Settings menu 🙁 but the good news is that I successfully turned it off 😀 ! Many of my fellow Androidites have been asking me how I did it, guess what? -Its not a geekie thing to do. It is as simple as this:

How to turn off the automatic insertion of icons and widgets to your Android Homescreen
See the screen shot from my phone for a visual aid.

Simply go to your Android Market AKA Google play store ===> touch the Menu pad and select Settings===> From Settings turn off Auto-add widgets which is selected by default===> FINISH!

Once you do this, edit your Home screen for the last time because nothing is going to change it again without your permission!

[subscribe2]