At long last, Apple announces home screen app icon customizations

The WWDC Keynote has now ended and as expected, Apple announced a way for iPhone users to customize their home screens.  You'll be able to move your widgets app icons around to any open space on the screen. You can frame your wallpaper with your app icons or make a custom look that you like. Not only will home screen app icons get a Dark Mode look, but you'll be able to use a slider on the bottom of the screen to adjust the colors of the icons. Users will also receive suggestions based on the color theme of their wallpaper. Of course, we've already seen that on Android. Users will also be able to make app icons bigger.

Still, this is a major change to iOS which has long been criticized and ridiculed for keeping users' app icons in the same old grid. With the new custom app icons, everyone's iPhone will be as different as they are. And while this change has nothing to do with AI, it still is a major new upgrade for iPhone users who have been waiting for something like this for a long time.

Apple first added customization to the iPhone home screen with iOS 14 in 2020. That year, Apple gave iPhone users the ability to add Android-style widgets to the iPhone home screen. Home screen widgets have been available on Android ever since the T-Mobile G1, the first Android handset, was released in October 2008.

Apple is releasing the iOS 18 beta for developers starting today while the public beta will be released next month.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, said, "We are thrilled to introduce iOS 18. It is a huge release with incredible features, including new levels of customization and capability, a redesigned Photos app, and powerful ways to stay connected with Messages. There are so many benefits for everyone. This release also marks the beginning of a tremendously exciting new era of personal intelligence with Apple Intelligence delivering intuitive, powerful, and instantly useful experiences that will transform the iPhone experience, all with privacy at the core. We can’t wait for users to experience it."

Apple iPhone users who have been waiting for home screen app icon customization since 2007 are looking forward to the release of iOS 18 and the final version of the operating system will arrive this September at the same time that the iPhone 16 series is released.