Bear in mind how iOS was once criticized for its inflexible, one-size-fits-all method to design and format? On the fee it is introducing customization options to its iPhone software program, Apple is doing its greatest to make you overlook about all that.
Latest iOS updates have given you the flexibility to delete Apple’s built-in apps, add widgets to your house display and even alter the look of your house display. iOS 18 contributes to this customization push with instruments that go away the look of your house display totally as much as you. No extra grids of neatly organized apps or icons with unalterable colours. Now you caan tweak all that, within the identify of constructing the house display’s format serve your concept of group.
It is a daring new path for iOS, although not essentially one which will likely be tough for iPhone customers to grasp. From what we have seen in Apple’s demos of the characteristic, customizing your house display will work so much like dropping in widgets or re-ordering apps does now — solely with much more choices.
We’ll discover out extra as soon as the general public beta of iOS 18 arrives, which ought to be by July. For now, here is what we all know concerning the residence web page customization capabilities launched in iOS 18 based mostly on Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote and its iOS 18 preview web page.
Customise your house display format
By far, the largest interface change iOS 18 brings to your iPhone is the flexibility to regulate your interface nonetheless you want. On my iPhone 12, my residence display generally is a 4 x 6 grid of app icons; I can place a widget in there, too, nevertheless it simply takes up the house that might in any other case be allotted to apps.
That modifications as soon as I improve to iOS 18, which can let me place these apps and widgets wherever on the house display. Possibly I’ve obtained a specific picture serving as my residence display wallpaper — as a substitute of getting apps cowl that picture, I can place the icons in such a means that faces or key particulars are seen. I also can group my apps on the backside of the display to make them simpler to achieve — useful on bigger display iPhones — or place all of them on the aspect of of the show.
One factor seems to be fastened in all of the demo screens Apple has proven off up to now. Irrespective of nonetheless else you configure your house display, there’s all the time a dock of 4 apps on the backside. (You proceed to have the choice of optimizing which apps reside in that dock, although.)
New appears to be like for app icons
Along with altering the place your apps can reside on your house display, iOS 18 additionally helps you to alter their look. Apple has added a Darkish choice, which does for app icons what Darkish mode does on your display — darkening the white elements of the icon. You’ll be able to toggle between mild and darkish appears to be like manually, or set issues to darken because the solar goes down.
The darkish search for icons will apply to built-in apps initially, however presumably builders of third-party apps are getting the instruments wanted so as to add help for coloration modifications to their very own icons.
Moreover selecting between mild and darkish, you too can add a tint of coloration, utilizing sliders to regulate each the colour and depth. Coloration picker instruments allow you to alter the tint in order that it enhances or mirrors your house web page wallpaper.
Primarily based on the screenshots Apple’s made out there of personalized residence screens, adjusting the tint seems to be an all-or-nothing affair. It would not seem which you could individually alter the colour of particular app icons, say for grouping functions.
Modify icon sizes
Look fastidiously at that instrument for adjusting the colours of app icons, and you will see extra buttons labeled Small and Giant. These two buttons have an effect on the dimensions of app icons and widgets, with the Giant button making them simpler to identify.
Since this resizing instrument is in the identical management panel that adjusts coloration and tinting, we might think about app icon and widget sizing must be uniform — there is no making one widget bigger than the others.
Locking and hiding apps
New residence display customization options additionally embrace the flexibility to bolster your privateness by controlling who will get to open apps — and even see that you’ve them put in in your telephone.
In iOS 18, you can choose which apps would require authentication once they’re launched. You’ll be able to require Face ID or passcodes to entry an app. (Should you’ve obtained a telephone with Contact ID like an iPhone SE, you need to use that methodology too.) If an app is safe, you will not see issues like search outcomes or notifications popping up in plain sight, both.
If that is not safe sufficient, iOS 18 supplies the choice of hiding apps from public view. As an alternative of exhibiting up on a house display, they will transfer to a locked hidden folder that solely you may entry.
For instance, I’ve a gaggle of apps associated to well being, together with ones for my well being insurer, my PPO and the drug retailer offering my prescriptions. Not solely do I not need anybody stumbling throughout data associated to these apps, I might want anybody my residence display to not know that they are even there. iOS 18 provides that degree of privateness to my residence display.
Swapping out lock display controls
This final characteristic is expounded to iOS 18’s overhaul of the Management Middle — that is a separate profile for an additional time, however because it entails data showing in your iPhone’s lock display, I wished to say it right here.
As you realize, your lock display has two controls on the backside — one to fast launch the digital camera to show in your iPhone’s flashlight. Despite the fact that you may customise different elements of your iPhone’s lock display, these two controls stay fixed — at the very least till you put in iOS 18.
With iOS 18, you may exchange the Flashlight and Digicam controls with completely different choices, whether or not it is a fast hyperlink to launch the Calculator or to summon up a Be aware display for tapping out an concept. When you’ve got a telephone outfitted with an Motion Button — simply the iPhone 15 Professional and iPhone 15 Professional Max, presently, although there is a rumor the iPhone 16 is including this characteristic — you may apparently entry your on-screen controls by means of the button.
