Bear in mind how iOS was once criticized for its inflexible, one-size-fits-all strategy to design and structure? On the price it is introducing customization options to its iPhone software program, Apple is doing its finest to make you overlook about all that.
Current iOS updates have given you the power 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 depart the look of your house display solely 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 structure serve your concept of group.
It is a daring new route 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 function, customizing your house display will work rather a lot 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 must be by July. For now, this is what we all know concerning the house web page customization capabilities launched in iOS 18 primarily based on Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote and its iOS 18 preview web page.
Customise your house display structure
By far, the most important interface change iOS 18 brings to your iPhone is the power to regulate your interface nevertheless you want. On my iPhone 12, my house 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 area that might in any other case be allotted to apps.
That adjustments 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 bought a specific photograph serving as my house display wallpaper — as a substitute of getting apps cowl that photograph, I can place the icons in such a manner that faces or key particulars are seen. I can even group my apps on the backside of the display to make them simpler to achieve — helpful on bigger display iPhones — or place all of them on the facet of of the show.
One factor seems to be mounted in all of the demo screens Apple has proven off up to now. Irrespective of nevertheless 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 seems to be for app icons
Along with altering the place your apps can reside on your house display, iOS 18 additionally enables you to regulate 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 may toggle between mild and darkish seems to be 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 assist for coloration adjustments to their very own icons.
Apart from choosing between mild and darkish, it’s also possible to add a tint of coloration, utilizing sliders to regulate each the colour and depth. Shade picker instruments allow you to regulate the tint in order that it enhances or mirrors your house web page wallpaper.
Based mostly on the screenshots Apple’s made obtainable of personalized house screens, adjusting the tint seems to be an all-or-nothing affair. It would not seem that you may individually alter the colour of particular app icons, say for grouping functions.
Alter icon sizes
Look rigorously at that device for adjusting the colours of app icons, and you may see extra buttons labeled Small and Giant. These two buttons have an effect on the scale of app icons and widgets, with the Giant button making them simpler to identify.
Since this resizing device is in the identical management panel that adjusts coloration and tinting, we would think about app icon and widget sizing must be uniform — there is not any making one widget bigger than the others.
Locking and hiding apps
New house display customization options additionally embrace the power to bolster your privateness by controlling who will get to open apps — and even see that you’ve them put in in your cellphone.
In iOS 18, you can choose which apps would require authentication once they’re launched. You may require Face ID or passcodes to entry an app. (When you’ve bought a cellphone with Contact ID like an iPhone SE, you need to use that technique 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 gives the choice of hiding apps from public view. As an alternative of displaying up on a house display, they’re going to transfer to a locked hidden folder that solely you possibly can 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 would want anybody my house display to not know that they are even there. iOS 18 provides that degree of privateness to my house display.
Swapping out lock display controls
This final function is said to iOS 18’s overhaul of the Management Heart — that is a separate profile for an additional time, however because it includes data showing in your iPhone’s lock display, I wished to say it right here.
As you recognize, your lock display has two controls on the backside — one to fast launch the digicam to show in your iPhone’s flashlight. Though you possibly can customise different elements of your iPhone’s lock display, these two controls stay fixed — a minimum of till you put in iOS 18.
With iOS 18, you possibly can exchange the Flashlight and Digital camera controls with totally different choices, whether or not it is a fast hyperlink to launch the Calculator or to summon up a Notice display for tapping out an concept. In case you have a cellphone geared up 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 function — you possibly can apparently entry your on-screen controls via the button.
