Last semester, I posted about the iPhone home screen customization made possible through Widgets and Shortcuts added in iOS 14. The building blocks were there, but the implementation was clunky and lacking in a lot of ways. Among the biggest problems was the lack of availability of widgets for popular apps and the need to open the Shortcuts app every time you want to open up an app using the custom icons. 

Shortly after making that post, I returned my home screen to its original icons and kept the widgets. It was just too clunky to have the Shortcuts app open every single time I opened an app (which of course, is a necessary and frequent action on a phone based on apps.) However, thanks to a small but significant change in Shortcuts, I have now happily returned to a home screen with custom app icons, Shortcuts, and widgets. 

 

Software Updates

In response to the popularity of custom icon creations, Apple changed the way Shortcuts work to open apps. Instead of opening the Shortcuts app as an intermediary between the icon and the app itself, the app is opened directly and a notification is shown across the top. Aside from making the process less visually busy (now using the same animation as opening an app), the notification style makes opening apps from a Shortcut faster.   

Home Screen Changes 

App Icons

I found and downloaded an icon pack of icons with simple images on dark backgrounds. It had icons already made specifically for most of the apps I want on my home screen, and I could fill in the gaps for other apps like Libby, Due, and PCalc with more generic or similar icons. The process of setting up the icons hasn’t changed (since my blog post)[Blog post link].

The one app on my homescreen that is still in its original form is the Messages app because I want to be able to see if I have any unread or unreplied-to texts. The inability to see badge app icons (the little red number at the corner) is now the biggest limitation to custom app icons, but not a dealbreaker for most apps where I don’t use or want them anyway.

Widgets

In addition to the app icons, I use both a Medium and a Small widget stack. My medium stack has a countdown widget to the end of the semester, a widget for my weather app, and a widget for the calendar app. My smaller widget stack has a widget for battery and the music app.

As with anything not fully baked, there is some weirdness, and there are some side effects to having primarily non-original icons on my home screen. I mentioned before the inability to display badge app notifications. It’s also impossible to access the Haptic Touch (long press) shortcuts available on normal apps. There are also occasional bugs where at random, the notification will not show and the app will not respond to touch until it is quit and reopened with the notification from Shortcuts. Despite the downsides and the abnormal behavior, I really enjoy having a home screen that looks completely different from that of any of my friends or my family. And the ability to tinker and set things up the way I want is absolutely worth the inconveniences.

So far, I have only discussed tinkering related to physical things in the real world–tangible tinkering. While humans have engaged in tangible tinkering since they first used tools, the advent of computers opened a whole new world of digital tinkering.

Much of that digital tinkering, however, has (especially in recent decades) been limited and squashed by platform vendors. This makes sense. As computing platforms reached mainstream adoption, their designs changed to be more accessible and usable by anyone. With larger platforms, security from malware also became a legitimate concern. So, computers were locked down. Hack-y tinkering jobs to make a computer feel like one’s own moved from more difficult to impossible.

My goal today is not to argue the merits of locking down a computer system or leaving it open to tinkering and customization, nor do I want to argue about the relative openness of platforms or who added a feature first. Rather, I want to highlight one recent example of a shift away from locked down, conservative platform designs and how you can take advantage of this shift to do some tinkering to make your home screen your own. The only tool you need for this tinkering project is your own iPhone. 

In its latest operating system update, iOS 14, Apple greatly expanded the ability for users to customize their home screens. Now you can make your home screen look and function exactly the way you want it to. This hinges on two new-to-iOS 14 features and one feature with new use.

First, a few definitions:

App Library – The App Library is a place to store apps outside of the confines of the home screen. No longer do all apps require a “physical” place on the home screen; they can all stay in sorted folders in the App Library. The App Library is accessed by swiping left one more time after your last home screen.

Widgets – Though they have existed for years on Android, iOS has finally added widgets with iOS 14. Widgets can be seen as condensed versions of apps that always appear on the home screen–even if the app itself is not open! They come in sizes of 2×2 apps, 2×4 apps, and 4×4 apps. Any app can create widgets, and many of them offer different possibilities to customize those widgets.

Shortcuts App – Introduced in iOS 12, the shortcuts app allows you to automate many system functions on an iOS device.

Some tips to make your home screen your own:

1. Clean the unnecessary apps from your home screen. Any app you do not need immediate access to might not deserve a place on the home screen. Remember, the app library is still easily accessible, and widgets take the place of anywhere from 4 to 16 apps. The right number of apps to have on the home screen will change from person to person, but if you can limit your home screen to one or two not-completely-filled home screens you will be well set up to add widgets and customize. 
2. Create shortcuts and add them to your home screen  If you want to further customize the look of your home screen, you can create individual shortcuts each designed to open one of the apps on your home screen. You can then add the Shortcut to your home screen and change the shortcut icon to any photo, effectively creating a custom app icon. I created a few Shortcuts in a Windows 95 theme. 
3. Add widgets. See what widgets you already have from your apps*, look into widget creation apps in the App Store, and decide which widgets deserve a place on your freshly cleaned home screen. Widgetsmith(link) is an immensely popular app that allows you to create and customize time, weather, astronomy, health, and reminder widgets with different colors, fonts, and styles. An app like Widgetsmith is helpful for an aesthetically themed home screen, while other app based widgets may present useful information.

*Press and hold on any part of the home screen to enter “jiggle mode.” On one of the top corners of your screen will be a “+” sign in a box. Click on it to reveal the widget menu.   

Final thoughts:

Is any of this…practical? Not necessarily. There is certainly the possibility to adorn your home screen with useful information previously hidden inside apps, but none of this needs to be practical. It can just create the phone aesthetic you want, and it can even just be fun. But more importantly, your iPhone does not belong to Apple. Your Android phone does not belong to Google or Samsung or Huawei. Your phone belongs to you, and you should be able to make it your own.

 

For more information: 

Marques Brownlee has a  helpful video on homescreen customization.

For a more in-depth look at Shortcuts, this video is a great start.