Apple released iOS 18 to the general public on Sept. 16, a week after the company announced its new iPhone 16 lineup, Apple Watch Series 10 and more at its September event. The update brings a lot of new features to your iPhone, like RCS messaging and a way to remove the flashlight control from your lock screen. One big change — an overdue one, in my opinion — is the ability to customize your home screen.
With iOS 18, you can remove app labels, change the color of app icons, arrange apps around the screen in new ways and much more.
Read more: iOS 18 Brings These Features to Your iPhone
Here are all the ways you can customize your home screen to make it as fun and unique as you are.
How to remove app labels in iOS 18
Tap Large to make your apps a little larger and to remove app labels.
1. Long-press on your background to enter jiggle mode — where your apps are all shaking.
2. Tap Edit in the top left corner of your screen.
3. Tap Customize.
4. Tap Large in the new menu that appears at the bottom of your screen.
Your app icons will grow, and the labels beneath them will disappear. This looks much cleaner to me, and I don’t plan on displaying app labels ever again.
If you don’t like this, follow the above steps again but tap Small. The apps will revert to their normal size and the labels will reappear.
How to change the color of your app icons
1. Long-press on your background to enter jiggle mode — where your apps are shaking.
2. Tap Edit in the top left corner of your screen.
3. Tap Customize.
4. Tap the icon in the far right of the menu across the bottom of your screen labeled Tinted.
This will pull up a gradient scale at the bottom of this menu, and you can slide them until you get just the right hue.
The icon on the far right shows what a tinted app would look like
You can also tap the eyedropper icon in the top right corner of the menu to select a color from your background that matches your icons more closely. That way you’re not moving the sliders and getting frustrated because the colors aren’t matching — not that this happened to me, definitely not. This change will affect all your app icons.
You can also give some of your apps a darker background.
1. Long-press on your background to enter jiggle mode — where your apps are shaking.
2. Tap Edit in the top left corner of your screen.
3. Tap Customize.
4. Tap the icon left of center in the menu across the bottom of your screen labeled Dark.
Apple’s first-party apps, like Messages, Safari and more, will now have an almost-black background. This change applies to first-party Apple apps and some third-party apps, like the YouTube and Bluesky apps. Other third-party apps, like Instagram and Snapchat, are unchanged.
Choosing Dark will darken your background, which could reduce the amount of power your iPhone uses and extend your battery life.
How to only darken your background
If you’ve tinted your app icons, or like the icons with a lighter appearance, you can darken your background to make the icons stand out. Here’s how.
1. Long-press on part of your background to enter jiggle mode — where your apps are shaking.
2. Tap Edit in the top left corner of your screen.
3. Tap Customize.
4. Tap the sun icon in the top left corner of the new menu.
This will only darken your wallpaper and won’t affect your app icons.
How to arrange apps around your home screen
Arranging apps on your home screen is the same process as before. You can either enter jiggle mode by long-pressing on a blank portion of your background and then dragging apps where you want them to go, or press and drag an app to a new location.
You can place all your apps near the bottom of your screen, have them frame your screen or arrange them in any other number of patterns. Since I’m right-handed, I placed most of my apps on the right side of my screen so I can easily tap them without fear of dropping my phone. This also makes it easy to ensure you see your background if it’s a picture of a loved one or a pet.
The grid is still present, so you can’t place apps on top of each other or too close together. If you enlarge your apps, there will be a sizable gap between your dock across the bottom of your screen and the lowest row of the grid. It looks like it’s big enough to fit another app icon, but you can’t — I tried to no avail.
For more on iOS 18, here’s my review of iOS 18, what to know about RCS messaging on iOS 18 and our iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check out what could come to your iPhone with iOS 18.1.
Watch this: 11 Hidden Features in iOS 18
