Re: Sudden screen re-arrangement

On 3/18/2024 10:42 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:

My android phone has suddenly rearranged all the icons through all the screens.
A new little white circle with 9 little dots has appeared on the home screen,

Unlike MS Windows that seems to re-arrange its desktop icons every time it updates the icon cache, there are only two reasons that I'm aware of that cause Android to re-arrange icons:
1. you installed a new app & have "Add to Home Screen" turned on
2. you changed Home Screen settings/customizations
You don't mention the brand/model of phone that you have.
The icon you describe sounds like the app drawer icon that I have on my Samsung Galaxy S23.  For my phone, I can control whether or not that icon is displayed by Settings > Home Screen > "Show Apps screen button on Home screen".
On my phone, I can control whether new app icons are displayed on the home screen by Settings > Home Screen > "Add new apps to Home screen". I believe that this setting is turned on by default.  One of the first things that I do with a new phone is to turn this setting off, since I carefully organize the icons on my Home Screen & don't want anything to change it.
Lastly, you should be able to see what has been recently installed on your phone (assuming that you didn't manually side load an app) by Play Store > click on profile pic or initials in upper right > "Manage apps & devices" > Manage tab > select "Installed", then sort by "Recently updated"
Regards,
-David