One of the new features to hit your iPhone in iOS 14 is the ability to customize your Home Screen.
Yes, you are no longer constrained to the icons that Apple and the app developers chose for icons. You can change them all if you want, for any icon you find online, without jailbreaking your iPhone.
That means you can finally customize your iPhone to be unique, instead of just having the same Home Screen as everybody else.
There are a couple of big caveats before we start, with the biggest being that you’ll lose Notification badges on your new icons. Maybe that’s a bonus to you, I know I hate being reminded that I’ve got hundreds of emails to attend to.
The other thing is that technically you’re replacing your normal app icons with Shortcuts, so you’ll see the Shortcuts app launch before your intended app. If that is likely to annoy you, maybe give customizing your icons a miss for the time being.
Here’s how to change your icons on iOS 14
Image: Maggie Zhu
The first thing you need is some icons to use for your Shortcuts. There are many sites on the web that let you download free icons, such as Flaticon, or icons8. Find all the ones you need for all the apps you want to make Shortcuts for, and let’s get to work!
- Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone or iPad
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- Tap the + icon at the top right
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- Tap on Add Action
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- Type “Open App” into the text field then tap on Open App
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- Tap on Choose
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- Search for the app you want to use a custom icon for, then tap on it
- Tap the three dots at the top right corner
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- Tap on Add to Home Screen
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- Then tap on the placeholder app icon, because the thing we want is custom icons, right?
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- Tap on either Take Photo, Choose Photo, or Choose File depending on where the image you want to replace the icon is located
- Select your replacement image
- Then rename the app in the text field
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- Tap on Add at the top right
- Tap on Done
- Now when you go back to the Home Screen you will see your custom icon.
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- Have fun doing this for all the icons you want to replace
Now you know how to reskin your iPhone with custom icons in iOS 14. Will you create a coherent, stylish design, or will your home screens end up looking like your average MySpace profile?
What do you think? Plan on switching up your iPhone home screen with iOS 14? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
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