With the launch of iOS 18, Apple is taking iPhone customization to a brand new stage. Before, you could possibly simply add widgets to your Home Screen or rearrange its pages, apply your individual wallpaper, and, extra not too long ago, customise your Lock Screen. Meanwhile, 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 photos they discovered on Pinterest, Google, or elsewhere.
With iOS 18, nonetheless, the power to vary all of your icons to a brand new coloration scheme is a built-in instrument.
You can even organize your icons and widgets in any means you favor, as they not must be proper subsequent to one another in a grid. That means, you could possibly select to border your wallpaper or place icons solely on the backside of the display, as an example.
Though the system for personalization has gotten considerably unwieldy as Apple has continued to roll out new choices, iOS 18 affords essentially the most management over the appear and feel of your iPhone’s consumer interface than another model of Apple’s cellular working system thus far.
Now, with a press-and-hold in your iPhone’s Home Screen, you may 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 Home Screen pages, or choose a brand new choice, “Customize,” to configure the colour and shading of the icons and widgets in your Home Screen.
iOS 18 presents 4 choices to your icons: the usual mild and darkish modes, in addition to an Automatic mode that shifts from mild to darkish as nighttime falls, and the brand new “Tinted” choice. When chosen, Tinted enables you to use the eyedropper instrument (upper-right) to choose a coloration out of your Home Screen’s background that then tints the fill for the lighter a part of your icons.
For occasion, in case your wallpaper incorporates a photograph from nature, you could possibly choose the blue sky’s coloration to function your icons’ tint. You can additional regulate the colour choices utilizing two backside sliders, one for the shade itself and one other for the saturation. (Sliding all of it the best way 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 Home Screen seems to be. 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 shortly took benefit of latest performance within the 2020 launch of iOS 14 to personalize their Home Screens with customized icons launched by way of Shortcuts and widgets. Pinterest adoption soared on the time, as younger folks 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 is, as an alternative of annoying folks 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 the use of a customized icon.
But till now, Apple hasn’t made it doable for customers to customise their apps’ current icons with shades and colours of their selecting.
While you continue to can’t customise the design of the icon’s picture itself (with out using your individual shortcuts), builders can select to ship various 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 various icons, although.
After selecting the icon you favor from the apps that supply alternate options, you may then proceed to pick out the way you need them to seem: mild, darkish, or tinted.
Dark icons give the Home Screen a unique look (see photograph 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 comparable, however as an alternative of a number of colours, their lighter elements are shaded with a coloration of your selecting.
Uniform, darker icons whereas nonetheless in “mild” mode
Like many others, I didn’t discover the darkish icons with their odd splashes of coloration agreeable and the tinted icons don’t fairly match my tastes — although that’s extra of a private desire. However, I discovered a method to create a Home Screen with extra muted shades.
To accomplish 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 if you shift to the Large 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 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 an alternative of the garish colours they normally are. (Especially these horrible Google icons, which many memes have mocked).
A extra minimal Home Screen
If you’re searching for an much more minimalist Home Screen, another choice now obtainable by way of iOS 18 enables you to forgo icons altogether.
One of the highest 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 Home Screen with Actions. These Actions may also be used by way of the Control Center (accessed by swiping down from the highest of the cellphone display) and may provide shortcuts to issues like taking part in a favourite album or calling your greatest buddy, amongst different issues.
Control Center apart, Widgetsmith consists of numerous Home Screen widgets that includes rows of personalized icons, every linked to a specific motion. Without widget labels, these can mix extra seamlessly into your Home Screen, permitting for a extra minimal — or at the very least 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 folks 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 doable in iOS 18 are actually transformative to how your house display feels,” says Widgetsmith’s developer David Smith. “Since Apple drops the requirement for widgets to have their subtitles you may fully take over your iPhone and make all of it your individual.”
However, the extra fascinating concept Widgetsmith introduces is considered one of a Home Screen that doesn’t embody any icons.
Instead, you may select to put in widgets that spell out in textual content the assorted apps you might wish to entry, like Weather, Mail, Maps, Music, and Calendar. You may use these alone on the display or alongside different widgets. You may 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 type of performance, but it surely’s among the many best-known.
Another one centered particularly on minimalist Home Screens is Dumb Phone, an app whose title refers back to the easy consumer interface from the times earlier than the smartphone arrived. With Dumb Phone, you may also create an identical minimalist Home Screen and regulate the theme to Light or Dark.
The app’s developer, Michael Tigas, claims that the modifications helped him lower down on display time.
Using icon placement to enhance your wallpaper
Another fascinating concept that comes from the newly added means to position icons anyplace in iOS 18 is that the icons themselves can turn out to be part of your theme and wallpaper, mixing into the illustration in methods they couldn’t earlier than.
One app making the most of this performance is Themify, a customization utility that now features a part of themes “impressed by iOS 18” on the high of its Discover web page.
Here, you’ll discover themes (collections of wallpapers, widgets, and icons) the place icons turn out to be part of the background, like one the place icons set to Large mode turn out to be planets within the photo voltaic system, or one other the place small icons turn out to be wall decor.
Themify additionally helps different iOS options like Lock Screen widgets and themes, contact posters, standby screens, and extra.
Other personalization apps I’ve used previously embody Brass, Aesthetic, Aesthetic Kit, Best Widgets, Color Themes, Reskin, ThemeKit, ThemePack, Widgy, and Wallaroo for wallpapers.
Customizing your Home Screen is just one of many new personalization choices that ship with iOS 18. You can now swap out the shortcuts to apps, just like the Camera and Flashlight, in your Lock Screen, and you may set up your Control Center and add your individual actions from third-party apps, offered builders help the choice. You can even customise how the controls are laid out, grouped, and their measurement, Apple notes.
Want to share your iOS 18 customizations with me? Join me on Threads or Bluesky and let me see your creations!
