iPad home button functions and home screen options

Discover the iPad home button

There is a single button on the front of the iPad: the Home button. This round, gently indented switch sits in the bottom-center of the iPad's black picture frame. This is actually the button you will probably use most often in your iPad adventures.

Pressing the Home button does some things. For one, it always goes Home - back to the iPad's main screen, where you can get to all your program icons. Since the iPad lets you run only one application at a time, you use the Home button to change programs, too. You could be waist-deep in a Keynote presentation and want to take a break with an episode of Glee. Just press the house button to close Keynote and go back to the main iPad screen, then tap open your Videos icon to get to your shows.

But the Home button includes a few more tricks up its sleeve. You can program it to complete specific tasks when you double-click it. To set this up, go to the Home screen and tap Settings?General?Home. Here, you have three choices for double-clicking Home-button fun. Tap the one you would like:

Home. Often wind up six screens of apps away from your first Home screen, with its Settings icon and other default programs? Double-click to go Home.
Search. Are you summoning the Spotlight search function constantly to find stuff on your iPad? Select Search to go there in two clicks.
iPod. Is music a constant part of your iPad experience, even if you wander away from the iPod app? Choose iPod here to summon the background music playback controls using the Home button two-press.

The home screen icons

Even before you add a single app towards the iPad, it comes with a whole bunch of programs ready to use. These include personal-organization tools like Calendar, Contacts, and Notes, a Maps app so you can find your way around, YouTube to trap up on the latest in online videos, and a Videos program to play movies you sock away on the iPad itself.

The iTunes and App Store icons take you to Apple's online stores, while the Settings icon enables you to adjust the way the iPad and its programs behave. Across the bottom of the screen, you will find icons for Safari, Mail, Photos, and iPod - the latter's where all your iTunes music spends time at.

Add more home screens

Once you start adding programs to the iPad, you may find your Home screen obtaining a little crowded. Fortunately, the iPad lets you have more than one Home screen - in fact, you can have 11 of these. To navigate among them, flick your finger across the iPad's surface. The small white dots at the end of the screen demonstrate how many Home screens you have and which one you're on.

Want to rearrange your icons? Press and hold any icon for some seconds until all the icons start wiggling and jiggling. Use your finger to drag them around to new locations - or from the edge of one screen and to the next. Press the house button to stop the Dance from the Icons.

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