Pages & the work profile

Reordering pages

Long-press the home screen and choose “Reorder pages” to zoom out to a page overview, then long-press a page and drag it to a new position.

Under the hood

The zoomed-out view reuses a dormant zoom state that already existed in the underlying launcher code, rather than a new one built for this feature. Page order has no separate rank value to maintain — it’s the sort order of the items already on each page, so a drop rearranges the existing set rather than renumbering anything.

Hiding work pages

From the same reorder view, tap a page’s work badge to mark it as a work page. No page is marked as a work page until you mark one. A marked page hides automatically when you turn off the Android work profile, and returns when you turn the work profile back on.

The first page can never be a work page — dragging a marked page into the front position clears its work designation. Inside the reorder view itself, every page stays visible regardless of its hidden state, and a page about to be hidden is dimmed so you can see which ones are affected before you leave. A work-page designation is tied to specific pages and does not survive a grid shape change; a backup restore only carries the designation over onto a device with the same grid shape.

Under the hood

Hiding a page collapses it out of the scrolling layout the same way any hidden view is skipped, rather than removing it from the model — which is what lets it reappear instantly once the work profile comes back. Detecting the work profile turning on or off uses a dedicated listener rather than a more general one, because the general one only fires when the work profile already has something bound to the home screen — a page holding only personal apps would never trigger it. The designation is written back only once every page is known to exist, rather than on every visibility check, so a device restarting doesn’t mistake its very first page for the complete set and erase the setting.

Limits

Reordering pages doesn’t work in two-panel layouts — the side-by-side home screen on tablets and unfolded foldables. The page dots give no indication of where a dragged page will land, and there’s no accessibility path for reordering or for work-page marking.