With the launch of iOS 18, Apple is taking iPhone customization to a brand new stage. Earlier than, you might simply add widgets to your Residence Display screen or rearrange its pages, apply your individual wallpaper, and, extra lately, customise your Lock Display screen. In the meantime, energy customers downloaded apps that allowed them to customise their icons by the use of iOS Shortcuts and even created their very own icons utilizing icon designer instruments or photographs they discovered on Pinterest, Google, or elsewhere.
With iOS 18, nevertheless, the power to vary all of your icons to a brand new colour scheme is a built-in device.
It’s also possible to prepare your icons and widgets in any method you like, as they now not need to be proper subsequent to one another in a grid. That method, you might select to border your wallpaper or place icons solely on the backside of the display screen, as an example.
Although the system for personalization has gotten considerably unwieldy as Apple has continued to roll out new choices, iOS 18 gives probably the most management over the appear and feel of your iPhone’s person interface than every other model of Apple’s cell working system thus far.
Now, with a press-and-hold in your iPhone’s Residence 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 have the ability to add widgets, edit Residence Display screen pages, or choose a brand new choice, “Customise,” to configure the colour and shading of the icons and widgets in your Residence Display screen.
iOS 18 presents 4 choices to your icons: the usual gentle and darkish modes, in addition to an Computerized mode that shifts from gentle to darkish as nighttime falls, and the brand new “Tinted” choice. When chosen, Tinted enables you to use the eyedropper device (upper-right) to choose a colour out of your Residence Display screen’s background that then tints the fill for the lighter a part of your icons.
As an illustration, in case your wallpaper includes a photograph from nature, you might choose the blue sky’s colour to function your icons’ tint. You may additional modify 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 could be a bit troublesome, and there’s been fairly some criticism, notably from designers, about how the ensuing Residence Display screen seems. It doesn’t really feel like Apple’s elevated design sense, however that’s the purpose: It’s your individual.
The function particularly caters to youthful customers who rapidly took benefit of recent performance within the 2020 launch of iOS 14 to personalize their Residence Screens with customized icons launched through Shortcuts and widgets. Pinterest adoption soared on the time, as younger individuals turned to it for photographs they might use as customized icons and themes. Apple rapidly responded to customers’ curiosity on this pattern by altering how these customized icons would reply when tapped. That’s, as an alternative of annoying individuals by briefly opening the iOS Shortcuts app, as earlier than, it launched solely a small pop-up that might show when the app opened by the use of a customized icon.
However till now, Apple hasn’t made it attainable for customers to customise their apps’ current icons with shades and colours of their selecting.
Whilst you nonetheless can’t customise the design of the icon’s picture itself (with out the usage of your individual shortcuts), builders can select to ship different icons as part of their app obtain. These icons are generally supplied as a part of a paid improve or subscription, relying on the developer’s choice. Not all apps supply different icons, although.
After selecting the icon you like from the apps that provide alternate options, you’ll be able to then proceed to pick out the way you need them to look: gentle, darkish, or tinted.
Darkish icons give the Residence Display screen a distinct look (see photograph above on the left), as they keep some colours however sit on black backgrounds, permitting extra of your focus to shift to the telephone’s wallpaper. Tinted icons are comparable, however as an alternative of a number of colours, their lighter components are shaded with a colour of your selecting.
Uniform, darker icons whereas nonetheless in “gentle” mode
Like many others, I didn’t discover the darkish icons with their odd splashes of colour agreeable and the tinted icons don’t fairly match my tastes — although that’s extra of a private choice. Nevertheless, I discovered a technique to create a Residence Display screen with extra muted shades.
To perform this, I toggled the choice from “Small” over to “Giant” within the customization mode, which makes the icons barely bigger and removes their textual content label. Widgets’ labels are additionally eliminated once you shift to the Giant icons.
I then choose the choice for tinted icons, slide the underside slider over to the proper for much less saturation, and faucet the sunshine choice within the top-left of the customization window to modify the general telephone display screen from darkish mode to gentle. This creates a brighter, extra uniform look the place the icons seem in shades of black, white, and grey, as an alternative of the garish colours they normally are. (Particularly these horrible Google icons, which many memes have mocked).
A extra minimal Residence Display screen
If you’re in search of an much more minimalist Residence Display screen, another choice now out there by way of iOS 18 enables 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 massive, label-less widgets to supply a wide range of methods to customise your Residence Display screen with Actions. These Actions will also be used through the Management Heart (accessed by swiping down from the highest of the telephone display screen) and might supply shortcuts to issues like taking part in a favourite album or calling your finest good friend, amongst different issues.
Management Heart apart, Widgetsmith contains varied Residence Display screen widgets that includes rows of personalized icons, every linked to a specific motion. With out widget labels, these can mix extra seamlessly into your Residence Display screen, permitting for a extra minimal — or a minimum of extra uniform — look, the place each icon is in the identical type.
The app ships with a wide range 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 attainable in iOS 18 are actually transformative to how your house display screen feels,” says Widgetsmith’s developer David Smith. “Since Apple drops the requirement for widgets to have their subtitles you’ll be able to utterly take over your iPhone and make all of it your individual.”
Nevertheless, the extra attention-grabbing thought Widgetsmith introduces is certainly one of a Residence Display screen that doesn’t embrace any icons.
As a substitute, you’ll be able to select to put in widgets that spell out in textual content the varied apps you might need to entry, like Climate, Mail, Maps, Music, and Calendar. You would use these alone on the display screen or alongside different widgets. You would 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 provides this kind of performance, but it surely’s among the many best-known.
One other one centered particularly on minimalist Residence Screens is Dumb Cellphone, an app whose title refers back to the easy person interface from the times earlier than the smartphone arrived. With Dumb Cellphone, you can too create an identical minimalist Residence Display screen and modify the theme to Gentle or Darkish.
The app’s developer, Michael Tigas, claims that the modifications helped him lower down on display screen time.
Utilizing icon placement to enrich your wallpaper
One other attention-grabbing concept that comes from the newly added capability to put icons anyplace in iOS 18 is that the icons themselves can turn into part of your theme and wallpaper, mixing into the illustration in methods they couldn’t earlier than.
One app benefiting from this performance is Themify, a customization utility that now features a part of themes “impressed 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 turn into part of the background, like one the place icons set to Giant mode turn into planets within the photo voltaic system, or one other the place small icons turn into wall decor.
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 up to now embrace Brass, Aesthetic, Aesthetic Package, Greatest Widgets, Coloration Themes, Reskin, ThemeKit, ThemePack, Widgy, and Wallaroo for wallpapers.
Customizing your Residence Display screen is just one of many new personalization choices that ship with iOS 18. Now you can swap out the shortcuts to apps, just like the Digital camera and Flashlight, in your Lock Display screen, and you’ll set up your Management Heart and add your individual actions from third-party apps, offered builders help the choice. It’s also possible to customise how the controls are laid out, grouped, and their measurement, 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!
