I haven't installed the new update yet as it erases a life if you are in the middle of it so I'm not installing anything new until I finish the life I am on.
As for the overlays, I'll tell you a few things to help you deal with them.
1. to read the most recent entries in your life, tap a little under halfway down the screen in the middle. in terms of vertical and slightly to the left. It will take some experimental tapping but you can find it if you want.
2. for the stuff that pops up, it generally appears in the center of the screen. If it is an event or decision that has several options, make sure you scroll down, even into the age/occupation/rlationships/etc because sometimes a choice or two is inbedded in there. It is hard but manageable and just requires a little more patience.
3. on the real estate menu once you get the knowledge on houses, you start at the top while on the list of cars to buy, you usually start the menu at the bottom.
3. you start the activities menu at the bottom and have to go backwards to get where you want to go. the submenus there with the exception of "end life" are in more or less alphabetical order. for example, movie theater comes right after mind and body.
4. You start the relationships menu at the top, except in a rare exceptional case when you have a particular number of relationships (don't remember how many.) in which case you start at the bottom. Shortly above that number things like "children" "grandchildren" and late relatives get put in separate sub-menus on that page.
5. as for the popups if you are swiping down, look to the above-mentioned thing about decisions, but they start shortly after your biography and before the "age" button. Though again, some decisions might be mixed in with the other menus at the bottom so scroll all the way if you aren't sure.
6. With your significant others (boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses etc." You will not always have both the option of have a conversation and spend time with them. With a fiance, you don't have either as things are, so unless you are in for heartbreak, I wouldn't try to get hitched until you have enough money for a wedding. But there is a workaround. If your fiance demands you get married, say "plan the wedding" and then click the "close option" on the wedding planning window rather than something like "call off the engagement" or something like that. This lets you buy time to get money for a wedding you want without hurting your relationship beyond just the general decay over time.
That's some advice I've found for playing the game and it is pretty manageable, though of course some stuff in prison is deemed undoable at this point, though I haven't learned for certain from my own experience.