Now that you have complete control over your home screen, you can get creative with it whatever you like. You may match your wallpaper to the clock and notes widgets, entirely redesign all of your app icons, or even create specialised themes to give your phone a genuinely distinctive look. Just observe how much enjoyment the new feature is bringing TikTok users.

Lacking a starting point The following is everything you need to customise your iOS 14 home screen for nothing.

Step 1: Download iOS 14

It’s never fun to sit around while a piece of software downloads, but we’re confident that the iOS 14 upgrade will make you happy. In order to download it, go to Settings > General > Software Update > Tap on Download and Install.

Step 2: Come Up With a Concept

Don’t stress about creating a theme if you only want to add a few widgets to your home screen so you can easily glance at your weekly agenda or to-do list. However, a little amount of forethought goes a long way if you want to go all out. The setup of a Twin Peaks-inspired home screen is covered in this article.

Sketch up the design of your ideal home screen on paper or with Procreate running on your iPad. Don’t forget that there are rules you must abide by: Having a 4-by-6 grid to work with, six rows of apps can fit on each page in four columns.

Step 3: Set Your Wallpaper

Although choosing your wallpaper will likely be the easiest step in this process, it is important because it will determine the style of your overall design. Since we’ll be changing app icons as well, try to choose something impartial enough to use as a baseline for other designs. The best choices are usually ones with solid colours, or at the very least, patterns with few hues.

If you want to change your wallpaper, go to Settings > Wallpaper > Choose a New Wallpaper > All Photos and choose an image you recently downloaded.

Step 4: Download a Custom Widget Installer

If you’ve already experimented with the iOS 14 update, you’ve probably already discovered that only the simplest apps come with built-in widget capability. This is partly because the upgrade is still relatively new and some developers might be polishing their widgets before putting them up on the app store.

While waiting, it’s possible to create unique widgets for no charge and without having any programming experience. Widgetsmith is our recommended app for this because it is free to use, so visit the app store and download it. Some further choices include Glimpse 2 and Widget Wizard ($1.99). (free).

When you first install Widgetsmith, you have two options for how to begin making widgets: either choose the “widgets” tab at the bottom of the screen to begin developing one based on size, or choose the “tools” tab to begin the editing process with functionality in mind.

To make it simpler to choose the widget you want from a list, Widgetsmith lets you give your own widgets names.

As an illustration, I hit on the widgets tab, chose “Add Small Widget” at the top of the screen, and then clicked on the widget to alter it. Now my home screen will have a widget that will display a quote. A menu of options will then let you choose the kind of app you want to create.

“Custom Text” was my choice for this. However, it’s crucial that you select the empty “text” tab that appears at the bottom and enter your phrase before changing the font, tint, background, or border. You’re done after selecting “save.”

Long-pressing the screen will allow you to search for Widgetsmith, tap on it, and then add it to your home screen. As soon as that is done, choose the size by pressing the blue “Add Widget” button.

By clicking on it, you can choose another widget from the list if the one that appears by default isn’t the one you desire. They will all be labelled “Small #1,” “Small #2,” etc., which can be confusing, so it will be great if you give each one a name.

Step 5: Add Shortcuts

Custom app icons will bind the entire home screen together, even though this step technically isn’t new. (This takes the longest of the process’s several steps.)

1) Save pictures. Your home page will need 12 photos if you wish to add 12 custom app icons. Therefore, if you haven’t already, find those pictures.

2) Download the Shortcuts app if you don’t already have it. Even though it’s a common piece of bloatware on iPhones, there’s a chance you already deleted it. On the App Store, it’s no cost.

3) To add a fresh shortcut, click the blue plus sign in the Shortcuts app’s upper right corner.

4) Select Add Action and then enter “Open app” in the search field. You need to see the top choice under Actions being Open App. Tap it.

5) Adding the desired app completes. Then, enter the app’s name by clicking Choose. It’s possible that you will also need to decide which action to take. I’m setting up a Gmail shortcut, for instance, so that when I launch the app, I can choose to perform the activity of sending an email.

6) Give your shortcut a name by tapping Next in the top right corner of the screen.

7) Tap the three dots in your new shortcut’s upper right corner.

8) Click on Add to Home Screen.

9) To make changes, tap the app icon in the Home Screen and Icon area.

10) To select the picture, tap Choose Photo.

Repeat these steps for any programme you want to keep on your home page to create new shortcuts. To avoid confusing yourself, try to name them all in accordance with the appropriate programmes.

Step 6: Hide Everything Else

The Twin Peaks theme I began required me to spend at least an hour to complete one complete home screen page. To be completely honest, I didn’t want to spend another two hours perfecting the appearance of the three home screen pages I had before starting. Fortunately, there is a quick and simple workaround you can apply to maintain those home pages and their information without having to sacrifice your style.

Click the bubble that shows how many pages you have near the bottom of the home screen by holding it down while doing so. To add a page to your app library that doesn’t fit your new aesthetic, click on any of the pages in question.

It’s done now! It takes time to create a masterpiece, so while this is undoubtedly a process, it’s worth it.