With the launch of iOS 18, Apple is taking iPhone customization to a brand new degree. Earlier than, you would simply add widgets to your House Display screen or rearrange its pages, apply your personal wallpaper, and, extra just lately, customise your Lock Display screen. In the meantime, energy customers downloaded apps that allowed them to customise their icons by means of iOS Shortcuts and even created their very own icons utilizing icon designer instruments or photos they discovered on Pinterest, Google, or elsewhere.
With iOS 18, nevertheless, the capacity to vary all of your icons to a brand new shade scheme is a built-in device.
You can too prepare your icons and widgets in any approach you like, as they not need to be proper subsequent to one another in a grid. That approach, you would select to border your wallpaper or place icons solely on the backside of the display screen, for example.
Although the system for personalization has gotten considerably unwieldy as Apple has continued to roll out new choices, iOS 18 affords probably the most management over the feel and appear of your iPhone’s person interface than some other model of Apple’s cell working system thus far.
Now, with a press-and-hold in your iPhone’s House Display screen, you’ll be able to faucet the upper-left “Edit” button to enter the brand new customization mode. From right here, you’ll be capable of add widgets, edit House Display screen pages, or choose a brand new choice, “Customize,” to configure the colour and shading of the icons and widgets in your House Display screen.
iOS 18 presents 4 choices in your icons: the usual mild and darkish modes, in addition to an Automated mode that shifts from mild to darkish as nighttime falls, and the brand new “Tinted” choice. When chosen, Tinted allows you to use the eyedropper device (upper-right) to select a shade out of your House Display screen’s background that then tints the fill for the lighter a part of your icons.
For example, in case your wallpaper contains a picture from nature, you would choose the blue sky’s shade to function your icons’ tint. You’ll be able to additional alter the colour choices utilizing two backside sliders, one for the shade itself and one other for the saturation. (Sliding all of it the way in which over to white makes the tint much less obvious.)
This course of generally is a bit tough, and there’s been fairly some criticism, significantly from designers, about how the ensuing House Display screen seems to be. It doesn’t really feel like Apple’s elevated design sense, however that’s the purpose: It’s your personal.
The characteristic particularly caters to youthful customers who shortly took benefit of latest performance within the 2020 launch of iOS 14 to personalize their House Screens with customized icons launched through Shortcuts and widgets. Pinterest adoption soared on the time, as younger individuals turned to it for photos they might use as customized icons and themes. Apple shortly responded to customers’ curiosity on this pattern by altering how these customized icons would reply when tapped. That’s, as a substitute of annoying individuals by briefly opening the iOS Shortcuts app, as earlier than, it launched solely a small pop-up that will show when the app opened by means of a customized icon.
However till now, Apple hasn’t made it potential for customers to customise their apps’ present icons with shades and colours of their selecting.
Whilst you nonetheless can’t customise the design of the icon’s picture itself (with out using your personal shortcuts), builders can select to ship different icons as part of their app obtain. These icons are typically provided as a part of a paid improve or subscription, relying on the developer’s desire. Not all apps provide different icons, although.
After selecting the icon you like from the apps that supply alternate options, you’ll be able to then proceed to pick out the way you need them to seem: mild, darkish, or tinted.
Darkish icons give the House Display screen a special look (see picture above on the left), as they preserve some colours however sit on black backgrounds, permitting extra of your focus to shift to the cellphone’s wallpaper. Tinted icons are related, however as a substitute of a number of colours, their lighter elements are shaded with a shade of your selecting.
Uniform, darker icons whereas nonetheless in “light” mode
Like many others, I didn’t discover the darkish icons with their odd splashes of shade agreeable and the tinted icons don’t fairly match my tastes — although that’s extra of a private desire. Nevertheless, I discovered a strategy to create a House Display screen with extra muted shades.
To perform this, I toggled the choice from “Small” over to “Large” within the customization mode, which makes the icons barely bigger and removes their textual content label. Widgets’ labels are additionally eliminated whenever you shift to the Massive icons.
I then choose the choice for tinted icons, slide the underside slider over to the appropriate for much less saturation, and faucet the sunshine choice within the top-left of the customization window to change the general cellphone display screen from darkish mode to mild. This creates a brighter, extra uniform look the place the icons seem in shades of black, white, and grey, as a substitute of the garish colours they normally are. (Particularly these horrible Google icons, which many memes have mocked).
A extra minimal House Display screen
In case you are searching for an much more minimalist House Display screen, another choice now obtainable by iOS 18 allows you to forgo icons altogether.
One of many prime customization apps, Widgetsmith, has been up to date for iOS 18 to reap the benefits of the brand new performance round giant, label-less widgets to supply quite a lot of methods to customise your House Display screen with Actions. These Actions can be used through the Management Middle (accessed by swiping down from the highest of the cellphone display screen) and might provide shortcuts to issues like taking part in a favourite album or calling your greatest good friend, amongst different issues.
Management Middle apart, Widgetsmith contains numerous House Display screen widgets that includes rows of custom-made icons, every linked to a selected motion. With out widget labels, these can mix extra seamlessly into your House Display screen, permitting for a extra minimal — or at the very least extra uniform — look, the place each icon is in the identical fashion.
The app ships with quite a lot of icon packs to customise their actions, or individuals can select their very own or use any SF image, that are the built-in symbols designed to combine with the system font for Apple’s platforms.
“The aesthetics … now possible in iOS 18 are really transformative to how your home screen feels,” says Widgetsmith’s developer David Smith. “Since Apple drops the requirement for widgets to have their subtitles you can completely take over your iPhone and make all of it your own.”
Nevertheless, the extra attention-grabbing concept Widgetsmith introduces is certainly one of a House Display screen that doesn’t embody any icons.
As a substitute, you’ll be able to select to put in widgets that spell out in textual content the varied apps it’s possible you’ll wish to entry, like Climate, Mail, Maps, Music, and Calendar. You can use these alone on the display screen or alongside different widgets. You can even choose to take away all of the icons out of your backside dock for a much less cluttered look.
Widgetsmith isn’t the one app that gives this kind of performance, nevertheless it’s among the many best-known.
One other one centered particularly on minimalist House Screens is Dumb Telephone, an app whose title refers back to the easy person interface from the times earlier than the smartphone arrived. With Dumb Telephone, you can too create an analogous minimalist House Display screen and alter the theme to Mild or Darkish.
The app’s developer, Michael Tigas, claims that the adjustments helped him reduce down on display screen time.
Utilizing icon placement to enhance your wallpaper
One other attention-grabbing concept that comes from the newly added capacity to put icons wherever in iOS 18 is that the icons themselves can develop into part of your theme and wallpaper, mixing into the illustration in methods they couldn’t earlier than.
One app profiting from this performance is Themify, a customization utility that now features a part of themes “inspired by iOS 18” on the prime of its Uncover web page.
Right here, you’ll discover themes (collections of wallpapers, widgets, and icons) the place icons develop into part of the background, like one the place icons set to Massive mode develop into planets within the photo voltaic system, or one other the place small icons develop into wall décor.
Themify additionally helps different iOS options like Lock Display screen widgets and themes, contact posters, standby screens, and extra.
Different personalization apps I’ve used prior to now embody Brass, Aesthetic, Aesthetic Package, Greatest Widgets, Coloration Themes, Reskin, ThemeKit, ThemePack, Widgy, and Wallaroo for wallpapers.
Customizing your House Display screen is simply one of many new personalization choices that ship with iOS 18. Now you can swap out the shortcuts to apps, just like the Digicam and Flashlight, in your Lock Display screen, and you’ll arrange your Management Middle and add your personal actions from third-party apps, offered builders help the choice. You can too customise how the controls are laid out, grouped, and their dimension, Apple notes.
Need to share your iOS 18 customizations with me? Be part of me on Threads or Bluesky and let me see your creations!
