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How to Add Custom Icons and Widgets to Your iPhone Home Screen

You can preview your calendar, to-do list, weather forecast, and more from your iPhone's home screen. Here's how to redesign the home screen to personalize your phone.

Michael Muchmore
 & Michael Muchmore Contributor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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One of the best ways to personalize your iPhone is to add custom icons and tiles of various shapes and sizes for apps, widgets, and folders to your home screens. You can also swap in images you choose in place of standard icons. This feature has been available since iOS 14, and iOS 16 added the ability to make customized home screen changes automatically based on your Focus mode.

As an example of how far you can go with icon customization, one user on X, formerly Twitter, used Microsoft Paint to produce amusingly amateur-looking icons. The secret here is the Shortcuts app. Here's how to create unique iOS home screens with custom icons and widgets.

How to Create Custom Icons for Your iPhone

A Few Drawbacks

While it's fun to create custom icons, there are drawbacks. For one, when you tap the custom icon to open the app, you don't go directly to the app. Instead, the action first opens the Shortcuts app, which then shunts you to the app you want.

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Also, you lose any long-press menu options the official icon provides. For example, the WhatsApp icon lets you start a chat or take a picture from a long tap. The only options you get when you long-press a custom icon are to delete it (it's called a Bookmark in this menu rather than an App) or edit the home page.

How to Make Widgets in iOS

Custom icons are fun, but widgets on the home screens can be more useful. And adding a widget to a home page is extremely simple.

For more, read Hidden iPhone Tips and Tricks to Make You an iOS Pro.

About Our Expert

Michael Muchmore

Michael Muchmore

Contributor

My Experience

I've been testing PC and mobile software for more than 20 years, focusing on photo and video editing, operating systems, and web browsers. Prior to my current role, I covered software and apps for ExtremeTech and headed up PCMag’s enterprise software team. I’ve attended trade shows for Microsoft, Google, and Apple and written about all of them and their products.

I still get a kick out of seeing what's new in video and photo editing software, and how operating systems change over time. I was privileged to byline the cover story of the last print issue of PC Magazine, the Windows 7 review, and I’ve witnessed every Microsoft misstep and win, up to the latest Windows 11.

I’m an avid bird photographer and traveler—I’ve been to 40 countries, many with great birds! Because I’m also a classical music fan and former performer, I’ve reviewed streaming services that emphasize classical music.

Technology I Use

For everyday work, I use a good-old Dell tower with 16GB of RAM, a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 processor, and an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti GPU that runs on Windows 11. I pair it with a 4K Lenovo ThinkVision P27u-10 monitor and a Logitech MX Vertical mouse. For offsite work, I use a 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Camera-wise, I moved to mirrorless from a Canon EOS 80D with a Canon 70-300mm IS USM lens. I now have a Canon EOS R7 with a 100-400mm lens, but I miss my DSLR for several reasons.

In order of usage, the software I turn to most frequently is the Edge web browser, Slack, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365, Firefox, Brave, and WhatsApp. I use the Windows Phone link app to see everything on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone, which has excellent telephoto capability.

For fitness monitoring, I have a Fitbit Charge 6 and use an Anker Smart Scale P1. I’m also a streaming fan, so I subscribe to both Amazon Music Unlimited (especially for its Dolby Atmos content) and Qobuz (for its high-res sound quality and classical catalog). I recently added a Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE, which sounds surprisingly good given its low price. To holler commands instead of using a remote control, I have the Amazon Fire TV Cube in the living room, which lets me verbally tell the TV what I want to watch. It hooks up to an LG B4 OLED TV. I have a Sonos One speaker in my kitchen that also ties in with Alexa, as does the Echo Dot 2 With Clock in my bedroom. For serious listening, I have B&W 601 speakers plugged into a Conrad-Johnson Sonographe amp and preamp, with a Cambridge Audio AXN10 streamer as source. For reading, I also have a Nook GlowLight 3.

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