I also take this same approach on my phone. I'm on Android atm so I can use Nova Launcher for a completely blank home screen and then set a swipe gesture to bring up the search panel. On iPhone you can achieve similar by enabling removing everything from the home screen and using the app libary or search although it does look weird with the empty dock section at the bottom so I tended to just leave stuff like the browser in there.
I feel like I achieve the same app opening speed with built-in Spotlight e.g. `cmd+space me` opens Messages for me too, without any third party software
> cmd+space+1 is 1Password
FYI shift+cmd+space is also 1Password's quick access shortcut
Install Alfred or Raycast and Command+Space your way to everything. Its 100x faster. I can launch any app in about 3 key strokes, which takes < 2 seconds and often less than a second with muscle memory.
For example cmd+space+c will launch or switch to chrome. cmd+space+py is pycharm, cmd+space+go is goland, cmd+space+fi is finder, cmd+space+me is messages, cmd+space+1 is 1Password. cmd+space+1p+space will start searching 1Password.
That launches apps. You can also just start doing math problems (calculator) by just cmd+space and start typing out a math equation. cmd+space+ai+space and just start asking a question to AI.
These only scratch the surface. But cmd+space, which is an easy modifier combo that you can do anytime, will basically unlock unlimited power. Once you get the muscle memory down you can literally launch any app in less than a second without even looking. If the app is already open, it just brings that app to foreground. Once you have that, you can use alt+tab to switch between apps that are already open. This is useful if you are just swapping between two or three apps for reference quickly. Furthermore alt+tilde (the squiggle key above tab and below escape on most latin keyboards) will switch between open windows of the same type. FOr example if you have 2 chrome windows open, it will switch only between those windows.