All the Ways to Customize Your iPhone Home Screen in iOS 18 Beta

Apple released the third public beta of iOS 18 on August 6, almost two months after the tech giant announced the software at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The beta update brings a host of new features to the iPhones of developers and beta testers, such as RCS News and the way to remove flashlight control from lock screenOne big change — and one that’s overdue in my opinion — is the ability to customize your home screen.

With iOS 18, beta testers and developers can remove app labels, change the color of app icons, arrange apps on the screen in new ways, and more.

Read more: An expert’s guide to the new features in iOS 18 betas

I recommend downloading the beta only on something other than your primary device. Since it’s not the final version of iOS 18, the update may be full of bugs and the battery life may be short. It’s best to keep these issues on a secondary device. I downloaded the beta on my old iPhone XR to keep these issues away from my iPhone 14 Pro.

It’s important to note that the beta isn’t the final version of iOS 18, so more features could come to your iPhone when iOS 18 is released. Apple has said iOS 18 will be released to the public this fall, but there’s no exact date yet.

Here are ways you can personalize your home screen to make it as fun and unique as you are.

How to Change Icon Size in iOS 18

1. Press and hold the background to enter shaking mode – where apps will shake.
2. To obtain Edit in the upper left corner of the screen.
3. To obtain Customize.
4. To obtain Big in the new menu that will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Your app icons will grow and the labels underneath them will disappear. It looks much cleaner to me and I don’t plan on ever showing app labels again.

If you don’t like it, just follow the steps above again but tap Small. The apps will return to their normal size and the labels will reappear.

How to change the color of app icons

1. Press and hold the background to enter shaking mode – where apps will shake.
2. To obtain Edit in the upper left corner of the screen.
3. To obtain Customize.
4. Click on the icon located on the right side of the menu at the bottom of the screen, labeled Dyed.

This will bring up a gradient scale at the bottom of the menu. You can move it around until you get the shade you want.

You can also tap the eyedropper icon in the top right corner of the menu to choose a background color that better matches your icons. That way, you’re not dragging sliders and getting frustrated because the colors don’t match — not that that’s happened to me, definitely not. This change will affect all of your app icons.

You can also set a darker background for some apps.

1. Press and hold the background to enter shaking mode – where apps will shake.
2. To obtain Edit in the upper left corner of the screen.
3. To obtain Customize.
4. Click on the icon on the left side of the center in the menu at the bottom of the screen labeled Dark.

Apple apps like Messages, Safari, and more will now have a nearly black background. This currently only applies to Apple apps, so third-party apps like Instagram and Snapchat will remain unchanged.

Selecting Dark will darken the background, which may reduce iPhone’s power consumption and extend battery life.

How to darken only the background

If you’ve tinted your app icons or prefer brighter icons, you can darken the background to make your icons stand out. Here’s how.

1. Press and hold a section of the background to enter shaking mode – where apps will shake.
2. To obtain Edit in the upper left corner of the screen.
3. To obtain Customize.
4. Click the sun icon in the upper left corner of the new menu.

This will only darken the wallpaper and will not affect the app icons.

How to Arrange Apps on Your Home Screen

Arranging apps on your home screen is the same as before. You can enter jiggle mode by long-pressing an empty part of the background and then dragging apps to the desired location, or long-pressing and dragging an app to a new location.

You can place all your apps at the bottom of the screen, arrange them in a frame, or arrange them in any number of patterns. This makes it easy to make sure you see the background, whether it’s a photo of a loved one or a pet.

The grid is still there, so you can’t stack apps on top of each other or too close together. And if you make your apps bigger, there’s a big gap between the dock at the bottom of the screen and the bottom row of the grid. It looks like it’s big enough to fit another app icon, but you can’t—I tried, and it didn’t work.

Keep in mind that iOS 18 is still in beta, so these features may be buggy or not work properly. I ran into issues where trying to tint icons would either completely remove the app’s artwork, or some icons would be tinted while others weren’t. There will likely be more betas before the operating system is released to the public, so Apple has plenty of time to work out any issues. There’s no word yet on when Apple will release iOS 18.

For more information on iOS 18, check out my hands-on experience iOS 18 public betaswhat is worth knowing about RCS Messages on iOS 18 and ours iOS 18 Beta Cheat Sheet.