With the launch of iOS 18, Apple is taking iPhone customization to a new level. Previously, you could easily add widgets to the Home screen or rearrange its pages, apply your own wallpaper, and more recently, customize the Lock screen. Meanwhile, power users have downloaded apps that let them customize their icons through iOS shortcuts or even create their own icons using icon design tools or images they found on Pinterest, Google, or elsewhere.
However, with iOS 18, the ability to change all of your icons to a new color scheme has become a built-in tool.
You can also arrange your icons and widgets in any way you like, as it is no longer necessary to place them next to each other in a grid. This way, you can choose to frame the wallpaper or place only the icons at the bottom of the screen, for example.
Although the customization system has become somewhat unmanageable as Apple continues to roll out new options, iOS 18 offers the most control over the look of your iPhone’s user interface than any other version of Apple’s mobile operating system to date.
Now, by pressing and holding on your iPhone’s Home screen, you can tap the “Edit” button at the top left to enter the new customization mode. From here, you’ll be able to add widgets, edit Home screen pages, or select a new option, “Personalize,” to configure the color and shading of icons and elements on your Home screen.
iOS 18 offers four options for your icons: the standard light and dark modes, an automatic mode that switches from light to dark as night falls, and a new “Colorful” option. When selected, “Colorful” lets you use the eyedropper tool (top right) to pick a color from your Home screen background and then color the lighter portion of your icons.
For example, if your wallpaper has a nature image, you might choose a blue sky as the color for your icons. You can also adjust the color options using the two sliders at the bottom, one for the shade itself and one for saturation. (Moving it all the way to white makes the color less noticeable.)
This process can be a bit tricky, and it has happened. completely some cashThere’s no doubt a lot of commentary from designers about the resulting home screen. It doesn’t feel like a cutting-edge design on Apple’s part, but that’s the point: it’s yours.
This feature is particularly aimed at younger users who quickly took advantage of the new functionality in the 2020 release of iOS 14 to customize their home screens with custom icons launched via Shortcuts and Widgets. Pinterest adoption surged at the time, with young people turning to it for images they could use as icons and custom themes. Apple quickly responded to user interest in this trend by changing how these custom icons respond when tapped. That is, instead of annoying people by briefly opening the iOS Shortcuts app, as before, it simply introduced a small pop-up window that appears when the app is opened via a custom icon.
But until now, Apple has not allowed users to customize their existing app icons with shades and colors of their choice.
While it is still not possible to customize the design of the icon image itself (without using your own shortcuts), developers can choose to send alternative icons as part of the app download. These icons are sometimes offered as part of a paid upgrade or subscription, depending on the developer’s preferences. However, not all apps offer alternative icons.
After choosing your preferred icon from the apps that offer alternatives, you can then select how it will appear: light, dark, or colored.
Dark icons give the home screen a different look (see image above left), retaining some of the colors but appearing on black backgrounds, allowing you to shift more of your focus to the phone’s background. Colored icons are similar, but instead of multiple colors, their lighter portions are shaded in a color of your choice.
Uniform, darker icons while in Light mode.
Like many others, I didn’t find dark icons with strange splashes of color acceptable, and colored icons just weren’t to my taste — though that’s a personal preference. However, I found a way to create a home screen with more subdued shades.
To achieve this, I switched the option from “Small” to “Large” in Customize mode, which makes the icons slightly larger and removes their text label. The tool labels are also removed when switching to large icons.
Then I select the Color Icons option, move the bottom slider to the right to reduce the saturation, and tap the Sunlight option at the top left of the Customization window to switch the entire phone’s display from dark to light mode. This creates a brighter, more uniform look where the icons appear in shades of black, white, and gray, rather than the stark colors they usually are. (Especially Google’s terrible icons, which Many memes have been made fun of.).
Simpler home screen
If you’re looking for a simpler home screen, another option now available with iOS 18 lets you ditch icons altogether.
One of the best customization apps, WidgetsmithThe app has been updated for iOS 18 to take advantage of new functionality around large, unlabeled UI elements to offer a variety of ways to customize the Home screen using Actions. These Actions can also be used via Control Center (accessed by swiping down from the top of the phone’s screen) and can offer shortcuts to things like playing a favorite album or calling your best friend, among other things.
Aside from the Control Center, Widgetsmith includes several home screen widgets that feature rows of custom icons, each associated with a specific event. Without widget labels, these widgets can be more seamlessly integrated into the home screen, allowing for a more streamlined—or at least more consistent—look where all the icons are the same style.
The app comes with a variety of icon packs to customize their actions, or people can choose their own icons or use any SF icon, which is Embedded icons designed for integration. With the regular font of Apple platforms.
“The aesthetics that are now possible in iOS 18 will really change the look of your home screen,” says David Smith, developer of Widgetsmith. “Because Apple has dropped the requirement that widgets have their own translations, you can take complete control of your iPhone and make it completely yours.”
However, the most interesting idea that Widgetsmith offers is the home screen that does not include any icons.
Alternatively, you can choose to install widgets that show in text the different apps you might want to access, such as Weather, Mail, Maps, Music, and Calendar. You can use these widgets alone on the screen or alongside other widgets. You can even choose to remove all icons from the bottom toolbar for a less cluttered look.
Widgetsmith isn’t the only app that offers this type of functionality, but it’s among the most popular.
Another topic that focuses specifically on simple start screens is: stupid phonean app whose name refers to the simple user interface that existed before the advent of smartphones. With Dumb Phone, you can also create a similarly simple home screen and set the theme to light or dark.
The app’s developer, Michael Tejas, says the changes have helped him cut down on his screen time.
Use icon mode to complement your wallpaper.
Another interesting idea that comes from the newly added ability to place icons anywhere in iOS 18 is that the icons themselves can become part of the theme and wallpaper, blending in with the illustration in ways they couldn’t before.
One application that takes advantage of this functionality is Themifya customization tool that now includes a section for “iOS 18-inspired” themes at the top of its Discover page.
Here you’ll find themes (sets of wallpapers, widgets, and icons) where the icons become part of the background, such as one theme where icons set to large mode become planets in the solar system, or another theme where small icons become wall decor.
Themify also supports other iOS features like lock screen widgets, themes, contact stickers, standby screens, and more.
Other customization apps I’ve used in the past include Brass, Aesthetic, Aesthetic Kit, Best Widgets, Color Themes, Reskin, ThemeKit, ThemePack, Widgy, and Wallaroo for wallpapers.
Home screen customization is one of the new customization options that comes with iOS 18. You can now toggle shortcuts for apps, like the camera and flashlight, on the Lock screen, and you can organize Control Center and add your own actions from third-party apps, provided the developers support this option. You can also customize how controls are placed, grouped, and sized, according to Apple. Notes.
Want to share your iOS 18 customizations with me? Join me on Threads or Blue Sky Let me see your creations!