Every time I post screenshots of my iPhone homescreen here on MacStories, I get comments and emails asking me about “that blue icon” next to Captio in my dock. Since I wasn’t able to reply to all those comments and emails and I love to talk about apps that change my workflow, I want to clear the air on this app and write about it.

The app is called “Favorites”, it’s been around for a while in the App Store and it’s developed by Matt Legend Gemmell over at Instinctive Code. It’s a very straightforward app that lets you create shortcuts for your favorite contacts and tap on them to initiate a phone call. Think of it as a homescreen for your contacts.

I fire up the app every day, every hour, to load up my favorite contacts and call them when I need to. Favorites comes with a grid layout that arranges your contacts visually by using the photo assigned to them in Address Book, and the more contacts you add via the “+” button, the smaller they become in the grid. You can set a custom wallpaper, if you don’t like standard black.

You can tweak the app in the Settings. You can decide to show names and change the default behavior from Phone to, say, SMS (I just use the app to quickly start phone calls), change the trigger to double tap and even set the double tap interval.

So why do I use this, instead of skimming through contacts in the Phone app? Because it’s easier, it’s visual – I got used to it. $1.99 in the App Store.