Introduction
Hello! Today’s bonus blog post is a step to step tutorial on how you can customize IOS 14 on your phone! Ever since IOS 14 has come out, people have been going crazy about different (and aesthetic) ways they have been customizing and organizing it. I finally took the leap and decided to customize it for myself! It was a long process for sure, so I wanted to share with you tips and tricks on how you can do this yourself.
If you prefer watching a video tutorial instead of reading, click here to video my youtube video!
Table of contents:
Downloading the Update
Picking an Aesthetic
Widget Dashboard
Creating Widgets
App Library
Removing apps from home screen
Creating shortcuts / changing app icons
How to create custom app icons
Final Product
Steps to Customize IOS 14 Update
Downloading the Update:
In order to customize IOS 14, the first step is to update your phone systems when you know you won’t be needing it for a while (perhaps at night). It took be a little over an hour and a half to update my phone. While I did this, I went ahead and did some research and figured out what kind of aesthetic I wanted. I also created my shortcut app covers. You might be confused now, but I will speak more about this in detail later.
Picking an Aesthetic:
There is so much inspiration on Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, etc, so it will be easy to figure out what kind of aesthetic you want for your phone. Picking this at the beginning will allow you to create a plan for how you want to organize your phone. The aesthetic I decided to go with is a fall vibe since the season is upon us. I went with the color scheme of maroon and darker orange, and I picked a fall wallpaper that I designed (click here for 14 free fall wallpapers).
Once your phone is updated and you have an aesthetic picked out, now it is time to explore your new IOS 14. Swiping all the way to the left, there is a widgets dashboard like the one in the previous IOS setting, but this is more customizable and there are more options to add. If you swipe all the way to the right, you come across the app library.
Widgets Dashboard:
I now am going to show you guys the basics of the widget dashboard to help you customize IOS 14 update. .
Again, swiping all the way to the left, you have a full widget dashboard. Here you can move, add, or delete widgets. At the bottom of this page, there should be a button that says “edit”. When you click on that, the widgets will “shake” and there will be a minus (-) sign in the left corner of them. This gives you the option to remove the widget from your dashboard. If you hold down on a widget, you have the ability to move it up or down your dashboard.
While the widgets are still “shaking”, If you look in the upper right corner there is a small plus (+) sign. This is where you can add more widgets to your dashboard. There are so many options that you can choose from so play around with this a little bit to fit your needs.
I personally did not need that much for my widget dashboard, so I have my battery percentages for my devices, my apple watch activity goals, and then the weather.
Creating Widgets:
Now this is one of my favorite parts on how to customize IOS 14. There is an ability to create widgets (like the ones that we just talked about) and have them on your main screen. This time, you have more ability to customize them (such as changing colors and fonts).
First you need to go to the App Store and download the app called Widgetsmith. When you search this, choose the first app. There are however, many Widget options choose from such as Color Widgets and Photo Widget, however I find this one easiest to use. Once the app is downloaded, you can start creating your widgets!
There are 3 types of Widget sizes:
- Small
- Medium
- Large
The small widget size is equivalent to 4 apps, the medium size is equivalent to 8 apps, and the large size is equivalent to 16 apps. The process for creating these widgets is the same, the size is just different.
As you can see in the Widgetsmith app, you can scroll down and see all of the widgets you have created. We are going to create a small app for this example. Click “Add Small Widget”, then click on the one you just added. Then click “Default Widget” and it will give you the option to pick what kind of widget you want. Some of the options include Day & Date, Photos, Calendar, Weather, etc. For this example, we are going to choose Day & Date. Once you have the style picked out that you like, you can choose what fond you want. Then you choose the tint color (which is the text color), and then you choose the background color. You can choose this based on what aesthetic or color scheme you are looking for. Once it is set to your liking, click back and hit “save”.
Adding widgets to your home screen
To add the widget you have created to your home screen, press and hold down any app so they are “shaking”. In the top right corner, there will be a plus (+) sign. Click on that and it will bring up a menu of widgets you can add to your screen. Scroll all the way down and click on Widgetsmith. It will give you the option to add small, medium, or large widgets. For this example, we made a small one so go to the small option and click Add Widget. It will add it to your home screen.
To change which widget you want, you can click on the widget, then click on the widget box, and it will show you all of the options of widgets you have created. Click on the one that you want, and then you can move it to wherever you want.
App Library:
The Iphone automatically adds all of your apps to the “App Library”. You can access this by swiping all the way right on your device. All of the apps you have downloaded on your phone are put into “folder”. This you cannot change, but these folders are pretty accurate in putting together similar apps. Some examples of folders are shown below.
As you can see, you have the ability to search the app library or you can scroll down and click on a folder. When you click on a folder, it opens up a more detailed view where you can see all of your apps.
Removing apps from your home screen:
If you want your phone to be minimalist, or you don’t want as many apps to be seen on the home screen there are 2 things you can do.
Firstly, you can remove apps from your home screen and put them in the app library. To do this, press and hold down on any app, then hit “edit home screen”. You will get 3 options:
- Delete App
- Remove from Home Screen
- Cancel
Deleting the app removes it from your phone completely. Removing from home screen does not delete the app, it just simply places the app in the App Library and it will no longer show up on your home screen. This is a great way to declutter and remove unused apps from your home screen while still having them on your phone.
Another way to declutter your home screen is to hid pages completely. Press and hold on any app and you will see all of the apps “shake”. Click on the dots on the bottom of your screen (just above the bottom bar), and it will bring up a screen that says “edit pages”. Here you can see all of the pages on your phone. If you want to hid a page completely, all you have to do is click the check mark, and it will uncheck. This does not mean the page is deleted, it means it is hidden. Re-check the mark if you want the page to show again.
Creating shortcuts / changing app icons:
Now I would say that this is the most tedious part of customizing your phone. You are going to need the app called Shortcuts. When you are in the app, there will be a plus (+) sign in the corner – go ahead and select that. You are now creating a “New Shortcut” and it will ask you to “add action”. Click “add action” and in the search bar, search for “open app”. Select that option and then it will ask you to choose which app you want to open. Pick the desired app, and then click next. It will ask you to name the shortcut, so you can create a fun name, or keep it the original name of the app. The shortcut will now appear in your “All Shortcuts” screen.
To add it to your home screen, click the 3 dots on the app you want to add, click the 3 dots underneath done in the right corner, and then click “Add to home screen”. Once you are in the preview mode, you can change the home screen icon. Click on the smaller icon and then you have the option to choose a file, photo, or take a photo. Once you do that, click done, and it will now appear on your home screen.
One thing to note about shortcuts is that when you have the shortcut on your phone and click on it, it will take you to the shortcuts app and then to the app you want. It is annoying piece, but the tradeoff for having an aesthetic home screen is worth it.
Once all of your shortcuts are created that you want, you can remove the actual apps off of your home screen into the App Library. Remember: don’t delete the app or it will remove it off of your phone
How I created my custom app icons:
If you want all of your shortcut app icons to be similar in aesthetic, color, or look, there are 2 ways you can do this.
Firstly, you can pull images from Pinterest and use those by editing the app icons like I talked about earlier.
The other option is to create them yourself like I did. I used the website Canva to design these. For the design dimensions, I just used the regular Instagram post dimensions (1080 x 1080) and found it worked perfectly. I choose which icons I wanted for which app and then choose my color pallet. After all of them were done, I downloaded them images and saved them on my phone.
Final Product:
So that is all over the main / basic steps of how to set up and customize IOS 14 home screen. I hope this blog post was easy for you all to follow. Please ask me any questions and I can try to help answer them! I love how my phone is set up now with my fall aesthetic, and I can’t wait to keep tweaking it and making it perfect!
If you want a video tutorial on this instead, here is the link again to my Youtube video!
I am posting every single day for the rest of September so come back tomorrow for a new blog post!
Instagram: @infinitebeauty7
Youtube: InfiniteBeauty7
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Email: infinitebeauty7business@gmail.com
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