How to customize your Home Screen in iOS 14

There are more home screen customizations in iOS 14 than ever before. Learn how to customize your iPhone's wallpaper, dress up your home screen, and set up widgets to make your iPhone more personal.

One of the best parts about setting up your iPhone is customizing it to fit your style. iOS 14 takes it a step further by allowing you to use new Widgets, flexible tiles that will enable you to quickly perform actions or glean information at a glance. We're here to teach you how to take advantage of some of the most common customization options in iOS 14.

This guide will start with the very basics and walk you through some of the more advanced features, so feel free to jump in wherever you feel most comfortable!

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Wallpaper

Apple provides plenty of high-quality wallpapers for your iPhone, which saves you the trouble of finding your own. Here's how you can use one of Apple's wallpapers on your phone.

How to set your wallpaper in iOS 14

Open Settings
Tap Wallpaper
Tap Choose a New Wallpaper
Select Dynamic, Stills, or Live
Tap the wallpaper you wish to select
Swipe, pinch, and zoom to set the picture to your liking
Tap Set
Choose whether you want it to be your lock screen, home screen, or both

Using a custom wallpaper has always been an option, and it hasn't changed much in iOS 14. Here's a quick refresher on how to set a custom wallpaper on your iPhone.

How to set a custom wallpaper in iOS 14

Make sure the picture you wish to use is saved to your iPhone's photo album
Open Photos
Tap on the photo you wish to use
Tap the share button
Scroll down and tap Use as Wallpaper
Swipe, pinch, and zoom to set the picture to your liking
Tap Set
Choose whether you want it to be your lock screen, home screen, or both

iOS 14, like previous versions, allows you to use Perspective Zoom. When toggled on, your iPhone's wallpaper will move when you tilt your screen. It uses a little more battery than when it's toggled off, so it is automatically disabled when Low Power Mode is on.

Widgets

The newest version of iOS has brought an exciting feature — widgets! Widgets are tiles that you can place on your home screen that offer a bit of expanded functionality over something like an icon.

For example, adding a music widget can allow you to see what you were last listening to and enable you to easily jump right back into your favorite playlists.

How to add widgets to your home screen in iOS 14

Tap and hold on your home screen until the icons begin to wiggle
Tap + in the top left corner
Scroll through to find a widget you'd like to use
Tap the widget you'd like to add
Scroll left or right to change what size widget you'd like
Tap Add Widget
Drag your widget into place

Of course, there's a chance that you don't want to use the official Apple widgets. App developers are beginning to roll out their own apps that allow you to create your own widgets, and we expect there will be plenty available in short order.

Currently, a favorite go-to is Widgetsmith, which you can easily download from the App Store here. Here's a brief guide on how to use Widgetsmith to make a basic custom widget.

How to create your own widgets with Widgetsmith

Download and open Widgetsmith
Tap Add Small Widget
Scroll through and tap the widget you'd like to create. (Eg: Moon Phase)
Tap and hold on your home screen until the icons begin to wiggle
Tap + in the top left corner
Scroll and tap Small Widget
Tap Add Widget
Drag your widget into place
Tap and hold on the Widgetsmith widget
Tap Edit Widget
Select the widget you created

Custom icons

For those of you who are comfortable using the Shortcuts feature, there's one more thing that you can do to customize your iPhone's home screen — create and use custom icons for apps. Because you're executing an app through a shortcut rather than directly, there will be a slight delay — especially on older iPhones. However, this is currently the only Apple-approved way to set your own custom icons.

We won't be walking you through the process of making or obtaining custom icons, so make sure you have the image you'd like to use downloaded to your iPhone's photo album.