With the launch of iOS 18, Apple is taking iPhone customization to a brand new degree. Earlier than, you might simply add widgets to your Residence Display or rearrange its pages, apply your personal wallpaper, and, extra lately, customise your Lock Display. 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, nonetheless, the means to alter all of your icons to a brand new coloration scheme is a built-in instrument.
You too can organize your icons and widgets in any method you like, as they not should 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 personalisation has gotten considerably unwieldy as Apple has continued to roll out new choices, iOS 18 affords 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 up to now.
Now, with a press-and-hold in your iPhone’s Residence Display, you possibly can faucet the upper-left “Edit” button to enter the brand new customization mode. From right here, you’ll be capable of add widgets, edit Residence Display pages, or choose a brand new choice, “Customise,” to configure the colour and shading of the icons and widgets in your Residence Display.
iOS 18 presents 4 choices in your icons: the usual gentle and darkish modes, in addition to an Automated mode that shifts from gentle to darkish as nighttime falls, and the brand new “Tinted” choice. When chosen, Tinted helps you to use the eyedropper instrument (upper-right) to choose a coloration out of your Residence Display’s background that then tints the fill for the lighter a part of your icons.
For example, in case your wallpaper includes a picture from nature, you might decide the blue sky’s coloration to function your icons’ tint. You possibly 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 Residence Display seems to be. It doesn’t really feel like Apple’s elevated design sense, however that’s the purpose: It’s your personal.
The function particularly caters to youthful customers who shortly took benefit of latest 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 may 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 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’ 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 the usage of your personal shortcuts), builders can select to ship various icons as part of their app obtain. These icons are generally 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 like from the apps that provide alternate options, you possibly can then proceed to pick out the way you need them to seem: gentle, darkish, or tinted.
Darkish icons give the Residence Display a unique look (see picture 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 elements are shaded with a coloration 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 coloration agreeable and the tinted icons don’t fairly match my tastes — although that’s extra of a private desire. Nevertheless, I discovered a approach to create a Residence Display 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 appropriate for much less saturation, and faucet the sunshine choice within the top-left of the customization window to change 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 often are. (Particularly these horrible Google icons, which many memes have mocked).
A extra minimal Residence Display
If you’re on the lookout for an much more minimalist Residence Display, an alternative choice now out there by iOS 18 helps 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 quite a lot of methods to customise your Residence Display with Actions. These Actions can be used through the Management Heart (accessed by swiping down from the highest of the telephone display screen) and may provide shortcuts to issues like enjoying a favourite album or calling your finest buddy, amongst different issues.
Management Heart apart, Widgetsmith contains varied Residence Display widgets that includes rows of custom-made icons, every linked to a specific motion. With out widget labels, these can mix extra seamlessly into your Residence Display, permitting for a extra minimal — or at the 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 attainable in iOS 18 are actually transformative to how your own home display screen feels,” says Widgetsmith’s developer David Smith. “Since Apple drops the requirement for widgets to have their subtitles you possibly can utterly take over your iPhone and make all of it your personal.”
Nevertheless, the extra fascinating thought Widgetsmith introduces is one among a Residence Display that doesn’t embody any icons.
As an alternative, you possibly can select to put in widgets that spell out in textual content the varied apps it’s possible you’ll need to entry, like Climate, Mail, Maps, Music, and Calendar. You may use these alone on the display screen or alongside different widgets. You may even decide 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.
One other one targeted particularly on minimalist Residence Screens is Dumb Cellphone, an app whose identify refers back to the easy person interface from the times earlier than the smartphone arrived. With Dumb Cellphone, you too can create an identical minimalist Residence Display and regulate the theme to Mild 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 fascinating concept that comes from the newly added means to put icons wherever in iOS 18 is that the icons themselves can grow to be 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 “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 grow to be part of the background, like one the place icons set to Giant mode grow to be planets within the photo voltaic system, or one other the place small icons grow to be wall decor.
Themify additionally helps different iOS options like Lock Display widgets and themes, contact posters, standby screens, and extra.
Different personalization apps I’ve used up to now embody Brass, Aesthetic, Aesthetic Package, Finest Widgets, Shade Themes, Reskin, ThemeKit, ThemePack, Widgy, and Wallaroo for wallpapers.
Customizing your Residence Display 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 Digital camera and Flashlight, in your Lock Display, and you may manage your Management Heart and add your personal actions from third-party apps, supplied builders assist the choice. You too can customise how the controls are laid out, grouped, and their dimension, Apple notes.
Need to share your iOS 18 customizations with me? Be a part of me on Threads or Bluesky and let me see your creations!
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