After years of being known for its uniform aesthetic, Apple is finally giving users room to express themselves. The latest iOS 18 software update offers more personalization options than ever before. One new feature allows users to tint their apps, giving their devices a more cohesive look that reflects their tastes.
The customization process is simple. To begin, hold your finger somewhere on your home screen until the app icons shake. Next, tap Edit at the top of your screen and then hit Customize from the drop-down menu. You should see a menu at the bottom of your screen listing four options: Light, Dark, Automatic, and Tinted.
The Tinted option brings up two sliders. The top one lets you adjust the color of your apps; the bottom one allows you to pick the color’s depth. If you wanted light pink accents on your home screen, you would adjust the top slider to pink and slide the lower indicator for a lighter shade. There’s no need to worry about saving changes—the modifications will appear automatically. To match the tint of your apps to your wallpaper, use the eyedropper icon in the pop-up menu to sample the background color.
If you select the Dark option, you’ll see the white elements and backgrounds of many app icons turn black. Automatic, meanwhile, sets them to automatically switch from light to dark from day to night. You can follow along with the instructions in the video above.
The new update also lets you increase the size of your icons and widgets. The default size is small, but you can press Large from the same menu to blow them up. You’ll notice that the name beneath each app will disappear to make room for the icons themselves.
Before iOS 18, personalizing your iPhone screen was mostly limited to cheats and shortcuts. In some cases these workarounds were Apple approved: A pre-installed app literally called Shortcuts lets you change your app icons to any image in your photo library.
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