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Since the app Covers on the Home page can be used to control apps, relayouting Covers as apps are closed destroys the user's mental map of where these controls are, requiring the user to recognise where a control has moved to each time the set of running apps changes and he/she opens Home.

My suggestion is to assign each app on startup a fixed Cover position in the 3x3 or 4x4 Home grid and only relayout when going from 2x2 to 3x3 grids or vice versa, maintaining existing corner positions. As a bonus, allow the user to manually assign Cover cells.

Example: Bobby knows that whenever it is running, the Media app will be in the top left Home cell, so muscle memory makes it easy to pause media.

Example: Grace has 9 apps open and closes the Browser app running in the (1,0) cell. The Media app in (0,0) and the Camera app in (2,0) remain where they are, and a placeholder item, perhaps a shortcut to the app launcher, appears in (1,0)

Since the app Covers on the Home page can be used to control apps, relayouting Covers as apps are closed destroys the user's mental map of where these controls are, requiring the user to recognise where a control has moved to each time the set of running apps changes and he/she opens Home.

My suggestion is to assign each app on startup a fixed Cover position in the 3x3 or 4x4 Home grid and only relayout when going from 2x2 to 3x3 grids or vice versa, maintaining existing corner positions. As a bonus, allow the user to manually assign Cover cells.

Example: Bobby knows that whenever it is running, the Media app will be in the top left Home cell, so muscle memory makes it easy to pause media.

Example: Grace has 9 apps open and closes the Browser app running in the (1,0) cell. The Media app in (0,0) and the Camera app in (2,0) remain where they are, and a placeholder item, perhaps a shortcut to the app launcher, appears in (1,0)

Since the app Covers on the Home page can be used to control apps, relayouting Covers as apps are closed destroys the user's mental map of where these controls are, requiring the user to recognise where a control has moved to each time the set of running apps changes and he/she opens Home.

My suggestion is to assign each app on startup a fixed Cover position in the 3x3 or 4x4 Home grid and only relayout when going from 2x2 to 3x3 grids or vice versa, maintaining existing corner positions. As a bonus, allow the user to manually assign Cover cells.

Example: Bobby knows that whenever it is running, the Media app will be in the top left Home cell, so muscle memory makes it easy to pause media.

Example: Grace has 9 apps open and closes the Browser app running in the (1,0) cell. The Media app in (0,0) and the Camera app in (2,0) remain where they are, and a placeholder item, perhaps a shortcut to the app launcher, appears in (1,0)

Since the app Covers on the Home page can be used to control apps, relayouting Covers as apps are closed destroys the user's mental map of where these controls are, requiring the user to recognise where a control has moved to each time the set of running apps changes and he/she opens Home.

My suggestion is to assign each app on startup a fixed Cover position in the 3x3 or 4x4 Home grid and only relayout when going from 2x2 to 3x3 grids or vice versa, maintaining existing corner positions. As a bonus, allow the user to manually assign Cover cells.

Example: Bobby knows that whenever it is running, the Media app will be in the top left Home cell, so muscle memory makes it easy to pause media.

Example: Grace has 9 apps open and closes the Browser app running in the (1,0) cell. The Media app in (0,0) and the Camera app in (2,0) remain where they are, and a placeholder item, perhaps a shortcut to the app launcher, appears in (1,0)