Use custom Focus Modes to create unique Home Screens, not just for managing notifications.
The Room That Changes With You
Imagine your living room could magically redecorate itself based on what you’re doing. When it’s time to work, the comfy sofa is replaced by a focused desk and your TV disappears. When it’s time to relax, the desk vanishes and the sofa and TV reappear. Customizing Home Screens with Focus Modes does exactly this for your phone. Your “Work” focus can reveal a screen with only your work apps, while your “Personal” focus can switch to a completely different screen with games and social media, creating the perfect digital environment for any task.
Stop using the default ringtone. Do create a custom one from your favorite song instead.
The Doorbells of a Neighborhood
The default iPhone ringtone is like the generic, builder-grade doorbell that comes with every house in a new neighborhood. When one goes off, everyone checks to see if it’s theirs. Creating a custom ringtone from your favorite song is like installing a unique chime that plays a few notes of a familiar tune. Now, when your phone rings in a crowded room, it’s an unmistakable, personal announcement that someone is at your digital front door. It’s a small touch of personality that makes your device uniquely yours.
Stop letting all your apps pile up on the Home Screen. Do use the App Library to keep it clean instead.
The Desk and the Filing Cabinet
Your Home Screen is your desk. Letting every app you download pile up there is like throwing every single document, pen, and paperclip onto your desk surface. It quickly becomes a chaotic, unusable mess. The App Library is the smart, self-organizing filing cabinet that sits next to your desk. It automatically files away all your apps into neat, labeled folders. This allows you to keep your actual desk (your Home Screen) clean and clear, holding only the few essential tools you need right now.
The #1 secret for a beautiful Home Screen is using an app like Widgetsmith for custom widgets.
The Designer Art on Your Wall
Standard widgets are like the generic, framed stock photos that come with a new apartment. They’re functional, but boring. Using an app like Widgetsmith is like hiring an interior designer to create custom pieces of art for your walls. You can change the colors, fonts, and layout to perfectly match your wallpaper and your personal style. It elevates your widgets from simple information displays into beautiful, personalized design elements, transforming a functional screen into a curated digital space that you’ve designed yourself.
I’m just going to say it: A chaotic, disorganized Home Screen with red notification badges everywhere gives me anxiety.
The Room of a Thousand Alarms
A messy Home Screen covered in red notification badges is the digital equivalent of a room filled with dozens of blinking, beeping alarm clocks, all demanding your immediate attention. That sea of red dots creates a constant, low-grade hum of visual stress. It’s a visual to-do list that you never asked for, screaming about unread emails, missed messages, and updates you don’t care about. A clean Home Screen is a quiet room. It’s a calm, intentional space that allows you to engage with your device on your own terms.
The reason your iPhone feels boring is because you’re still using the default wallpaper it came with.
The Blank Walls of Your Digital Home
Getting a new iPhone and keeping the default wallpaper is like moving into a new house and never bothering to paint the generic, sterile white walls. The house is functional, but it has no soul; it doesn’t feel like your home. Your wallpaper is the paint on the walls of your digital home. Choosing a picture you love—a beautiful landscape, a favorite color, a piece of art—is the fastest, most impactful way to inject your own personality into your device and transform it from a generic gadget into a personal, familiar space.
If you’re still manually changing from light to dark mode, you’re losing the convenience of setting it to automatic.
The Blinds That Open Themselves
Manually switching between light and dark mode is like having to walk around your house every morning to open all the blinds and every evening to close them. It works, but it’s a repetitive chore. Setting it to “Automatic” is like installing smart blinds that are synced to the sun. They will brighten your “rooms” during the day and then smoothly darken them as the sun sets, all without you having to do a thing. It’s a simple, set-it-and-forget-it feature that makes your phone feel more intelligent and attuned to your world.
The biggest lie you’ve been told about iPhone customization is that it’s not as good as Android’s.
The Luxury Condo vs. The Plot of Land
Customizing an Android is like being given a raw plot of land. You can build absolutely anything you want, but you’re also responsible for the plumbing and foundation, and it can get messy. Customizing an iPhone is like renovating a luxury condo. You have to work within the building’s strong, secure structure, but you are given a beautiful set of high-quality tools to design a sophisticated, elegant, and perfectly integrated living space. It’s not about which is “better”; it’s a different philosophy of design, valuing cohesive elegance over limitless freedom.
I wish I knew about the accessibility settings to change text size and boldness when I was younger.
The Large-Print Edition of Your Phone
Squinting to read small text on your phone is like struggling through a book with tiny, dense print. It’s a strain on your eyes and your brain. The accessibility settings that increase text size and boldness are like instantly swapping that book for the comfortable, easy-to-read large-print edition. It makes every email, message, and article effortless to read, transforming the experience from a frustrating chore into a relaxing pleasure. It’s a powerful tool that makes your phone dramatically more comfortable and accessible for your own eyes.
99% of users make this one mistake with widgets: using too many, which clutters the screen and drains battery.
The Over-Decorated Room
Widgets are like decorations for the walls of your digital room. A few tasteful, useful ones—like a nice clock and a calendar—can make the space feel functional and personal. But adding too many is like covering every square inch of your walls with clocks, weather stations, and news tickers. The room becomes a cluttered, chaotic mess that’s stressful to look at. Not only that, all those powered gadgets constantly running in the background will run up your “electricity bill,” draining your battery much faster than a clean, simple wall.
This one small action of choosing a new wallpaper will make your entire phone feel new again.
A Fresh Coat of Paint for Your Pocket
Over time, you get so used to your phone that it can feel stale and boring. Choosing a new wallpaper is the digital equivalent of giving your most-used room a fresh coat of paint. It’s a simple, quick, and free action, but it has the power to completely transform the entire look and feel of the space. The colors of your apps will pop in a new way, and the whole device will suddenly feel fresh, exciting, and new again, breathing life back into the gadget you use most.
Use custom app icons with the Shortcuts app, not just accepting the default icons, for a truly unique look.
The Custom Book Covers for Your Apps
Your Home Screen is a bookshelf, and your apps are the books. By default, they all have their own loud, colorful, and mismatched covers. Using the Shortcuts app to create custom icons is like having all your books professionally rebound in a beautiful, cohesive set of your own design. You can make them all match your wallpaper, or give them a minimalist, black-and-white look. It’s the ultimate step in personalization that transforms your Home Screen from a chaotic newsstand into a curated, elegant, and deeply personal library.
Stop using a photo of a person as your wallpaper. Do use a more abstract or scenic image that doesn’t clash with app icons.
The Busy Painting vs. The Calm Landscape
Using a busy portrait of a person as your wallpaper is like trying to hang a dozen small clocks and calendars on top of a detailed family portrait. The visual information clashes, making it hard to see either the portrait or the clocks clearly. The app icons and text get lost in the features of the face. A more abstract or scenic wallpaper is like a calm, beautiful landscape painting. It provides a clean, unobtrusive background that allows your app icons and widgets to stand out clearly, creating a more legible and aesthetically pleasing design.
Stop accepting the default app layout. Do arrange your apps by color or usage instead.
The Curated Bookshelf
When you buy new books, you don’t just shove them onto your bookshelf in a random order. You arrange them intentionally—by author, by genre, or even by color to create a pleasing design. Yet, most people let their apps sit in the random order they were downloaded. Taking a few minutes to arrange your apps by how you use them (placing your most-used apps within easy thumb reach) or by color (creating a beautiful rainbow effect) turns your screen from a chaotic jumble into a deliberately curated and efficient space.
The #1 hack for a clean look is creating a blank Home Screen with just a widget and your dock.
The Minimalist Foyer
Imagine the entryway to a beautiful, minimalist home. It’s not cluttered with coats and shoes. Instead, there’s a clean, open space, a single stunning painting on the wall, and a small, neat rack for your essential keys. You can make your main Home Screen this digital foyer. By moving all your apps to other pages, you can create a clean, calm space with just your wallpaper, a single beautiful widget (the painting), and your four most essential apps in the dock (the key rack). It’s an oasis of calm every time you unlock your phone.
I’m just going to say it: Most custom app icon packs are ugly.
The Designer Room vs. The DIY Disaster
A well-designed app icon is a tiny work of art, created by a professional designer to be instantly recognizable and clear. Many custom icon packs are the digital equivalent of deciding to redecorate your professionally designed living room with cheap, mismatched furniture you found on the curb. While the room is now “custom,” it often lacks cohesion, taste, and the simple clarity of the original design. Customization is powerful, but it doesn’t automatically equal good design; sometimes the original is popular for a reason.
The reason your widgets aren’t useful is because you’re not using Smart Stacks.
The Painting That Knows Your Mind
A regular widget is like a static painting on your wall. A calendar widget will always be a calendar. A Smart Stack is like a magical digital frame that intelligently changes the painting based on what you need. It learns your routine. In the morning, it automatically shows the weather. During the workday, it shows your calendar. In the evening, it might show your music controls. It’s a proactive and intelligent widget that anticipates your needs, ensuring the most relevant information is always there without you even having to ask.
If you’re still using the default alert sounds for every app, you’re losing the ability to know what’s happening without looking at your phone.
The House of a Thousand Beeps
Imagine you’re in a house where the doorbell, the telephone, the smoke alarm, and the microwave all make the exact same generic beeping sound. It would be impossible to know what needs your attention without looking around frantically. That’s what your phone is like with default alert sounds. Assigning a unique, subtle sound to your most important apps—a “swoosh” for email, a “ding” for messages—is like giving each device its own distinct chime, allowing your ears to instantly identify the source of a notification without ever looking at your screen.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need to jailbreak your iPhone to customize it.
Tearing Down Walls vs. Redecorating
In the early days, the only way to change your iPhone’s look was to “jailbreak” it, which was like taking a sledgehammer and tearing down all the walls in your well-built house just so you could hang a new picture. It was risky and compromised the structure. That’s no longer true. Apple has now become a flexible landlord, giving you a huge box of approved, high-quality tools—widgets, custom icons, Focus Modes—that let you safely redecorate and personalize your space without having to risk knocking down a single structural wall.
I wish I knew how to create custom vibration patterns for different contacts.
The Secret Knock in Your Pocket
A generic phone vibration is like a generic knock on your door. It could be anyone. A custom vibration pattern is a secret knock that only you understand. You can create a short, sharp, “business-like” buzz for your boss, and a slow, rhythmic “heartbeat” pattern for your partner. Now, when your phone is on silent in your pocket during a meeting, you can feel that secret knock and know, without a doubt, who is trying to reach you. It’s a silent, tactile language that gives you a sixth sense about your notifications.
99% of people don’t know they can change the voice and language of Siri.
Your Personal Butler’s Voice
If you had a personal butler, you would want to be comfortable with the way they speak. You wouldn’t want a voice that you find grating or hard to understand. Many people don’t realize that you’re not stuck with the default Siri voice. In your settings, you can become a casting director. You can audition several different voices, accents, and even languages, from American to British to Australian. You can choose the exact voice and personality that you find most pleasant, turning your digital assistant into a truly personalized companion.
This one small habit of curating your “Today View” with useful widgets will change your morning routine.
Your Personalized Morning Newspaper
The “Today View” (the screen to the left of your Home Screen) is like your own personal newspaper, delivered to you every morning. If you don’t curate it, it will be filled with random, useless ads and articles. But if you take a few minutes to customize it, you can place your most important headlines at the top: the weather, your first calendar appointment, your top reminders for the day. It becomes a powerful, at-a-glance dashboard that gives you a complete overview of your day before you even open a single app.
Use Back Tap as a customizable shortcut button, not just as an accessibility feature.
The Secret Button on the Back
Imagine your phone had a secret, invisible button on its back that you could assign to any task you want. That’s Back Tap. It’s a hidden feature that turns the entire back of your phone into a customizable button. You can set a double-tap to instantly open your camera, or a triple-tap to turn on your flashlight. It’s like having a secret, magical shortcut that only you know about, allowing you to perform your most common actions without ever having to even look at your screen. It feels like a superpower.
Stop letting Apple decide your app layout. Do take 10 minutes to organize your Home Screen for efficiency.
Arranging Your Kitchen for Cooking
When you move into a new kitchen, you don’t just leave all the pots, pans, and spices in the random boxes they arrived in. You spend a little time arranging them logically: you put the spices near the stove, the plates near the dishwasher, and the knives by the cutting board. This makes cooking efficient. Your Home Screen is your digital kitchen. Taking 10 minutes to arrange your most-used apps where your thumb naturally rests, and grouping others into logical folders, will make every single interaction with your phone faster and more intuitive.
Stop using a busy photo as your wallpaper. Do use a simple, dark wallpaper to make your app icons pop.
The Velvet Display Case for Your Jewels
Your app icons are like little jewels. If you place them on a busy, patterned, and brightly colored tray, the jewels get lost in the visual noise. A simple, dark, and subtly textured wallpaper is like lining that tray with black velvet. The dark, non-distracting background makes the vibrant colors of the app icons pop with incredible clarity. It creates a sense of depth and contrast, making your entire Home Screen easier to read and transforming it into an elegant, high-end display case for your digital tools.
The #1 secret for a personalized Lock Screen is using depth-effect wallpapers and custom widgets.
The 3D Movie Poster for Your Phone
A standard Lock Screen is like a flat movie poster. A Lock Screen with a depth-effect wallpaper is like a 3D movie poster. The phone is smart enough to find the subject of your photo—like a person or a pet—and place the clock behind their head, creating a stunning, layered 3D effect. Adding widgets for the weather or your calendar is like adding the showtimes and reviews to that poster. It transforms your Lock Screen from a simple clock into a beautiful, dynamic, and deeply personal information hub.
I’m just going to say it: The dynamic wallpapers that came with iOS 7 were the peak of wallpaper design.
The Lava Lamp in Your Pocket
The old dynamic wallpapers were like having a tiny, elegant lava lamp inside your phone. They featured slow, gently floating orbs that moved with a mesmerizing and calming grace as you tilted your device. They weren’t distracting or battery-draining like a full video wallpaper. They were a perfect blend of static and live imagery, adding a subtle, sophisticated layer of motion and depth to the Home Screen. They were a touch of pure digital magic that brought the interface to life in a way that modern wallpapers have yet to recapture.
The reason your phone feels impersonal is because you haven’t set a custom Contact Poster.
The Movie Poster for Your Calls
When you call a friend, what they see is just your name in a boring font. A Contact Poster is like creating a custom-designed, full-screen movie poster that announces your call. You can choose a great photo of yourself or a fun Memoji, pick a stylish font for your name, and select a background color that matches your personality. Now, when you call someone, their entire screen will be taken over by your personalized poster. It’s a powerful way to make your calls feel more dynamic, modern, and uniquely you.
If you’re still using the default keyboard, you’re losing the customization options of third-party keyboards like Gboard or SwiftKey.
The Standard Honda vs. The Tuned-Up Race Car
The default iPhone keyboard is like a reliable Honda Civic. It’s well-built, safe, and gets the job done perfectly well. For most people, it’s all they need. Third-party keyboards like Gboard are like taking that Honda to a custom shop and tuning it up for the racetrack. You can change the theme and colors, add a dedicated number row, or get more powerful text prediction. If you’re a “power user” who wants to shave a few seconds off every message, these custom keyboards offer a higher level of performance and personalization.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that customization will significantly slow down your iPhone.
Painting Your Walls Won’t Weaken Your Foundation
There’s a myth that customizing your iPhone will make it slow and sluggish. This is like believing that painting your walls and hanging up pictures will somehow weaken the structural foundation of your house. Modern iPhones are incredibly powerful. The built-in customization features—like widgets, wallpapers, and Focus Modes—are designed by Apple to be extremely efficient. They are the “paint and pictures.” They change the look and feel of your device without ever touching the powerful engine that makes it run smoothly. Your foundation is safe.
I wish I knew I could change the icon size and text on the Home Screen.
The Zoom Lens for Your Entire Phone
Sometimes, the default text and icons on the Home Screen can feel a bit small and crowded. Deep in the iPhone’s settings is a feature called “Display Zoom.” It’s like a zoom lens for your entire phone’s interface. Activating it makes everything—your app icons, the text underneath them, and the elements within apps—slightly larger, more spaced out, and easier to tap. It’s a simple, one-tap change that can make your entire device feel more comfortable and legible, reducing eye strain and improving usability.
99% of users don’t customize their Control Center layout for quick access to their most-used tools.
The Custom Dashboard for Your Car
The driver’s seat of your car is designed so that the most important controls are within easy reach. The Control Center on your iPhone is your personal digital dashboard, and you are the automotive engineer. You can decide which “buttons” and “switches” you want to have on it. If you use the Timer and the Flashlight every day, you can put them right on your main dashboard. This saves you from having to fumble through the “glove compartment” of your Home Screen, putting your most-used tools just a single swipe away.
This one small action of creating a custom Focus Mode for “Reading” with a clean Home Screen will help you focus.
The Soundproof Library in Your Phone
Trying to read a book on your phone is like trying to read in the middle of a loud, chaotic party. Notifications are constantly interrupting you. A custom “Reading” Focus Mode is like a key to a private, soundproof library. When you activate it, you can make it so all notifications are silenced and your Home Screen magically changes to a clean, empty page with only your book app on it. This creates a sacred, distraction-free zone, allowing you to finally get lost in your book without the constant pull of the digital world.
Use the “Reduce Motion” setting, not just for battery life, but for a faster, more direct user interface.
The Teleporter vs. The Glass Elevator
Opening and closing apps on your iPhone has a smooth, cinematic “zoom” effect. It’s like riding in a fancy glass elevator; it’s a pleasant and scenic journey, but it takes a moment to get to your destination. Turning on the “Reduce Motion” setting is like swapping that elevator for an instant teleporter. The cinematic zooms are replaced with a simple, instantaneous cross-fade. Apps open and close in a literal blink of an eye. It makes your entire phone feel dramatically faster, snappier, and more responsive.
Stop accepting the default Safari start page. Do customize it with your favorite sites and privacy report instead.
Your Personalized Mission Control
The default Safari start page is like a generic, empty office. It’s not very useful. But you can customize it to become your personal mission control for the internet. You can add “speed dial” buttons for your favorite websites, a feed of articles shared by your friends, and even a report card that shows you all the creepy ad trackers Safari has blocked for you. Taking a few minutes to set it up transforms it from a blank page into a powerful, personalized dashboard that is unique to your interests and needs.
Stop squinting at your screen. Do adjust the text size to a comfortable level in Settings.
The Prescription Glasses for Your Phone
We wouldn’t hesitate to get prescription glasses if we were squinting to read a book. Yet, we will struggle for years squinting at the tiny text on our phones. Adjusting the text size in your iPhone’s settings is like getting a perfect pair of prescription glasses for your device. You can slide a simple controller until the text becomes crystal clear and comfortable for your unique eyes. It’s a two-second adjustment that can eliminate daily eye strain and make using your phone a more relaxing and pleasant experience.
The #1 hack for a unique ringtone is using the GarageBand app to clip any audio file.
The Recording Studio in Your Pocket
Wanting to use your favorite song as a ringtone is a common desire, but the process can seem complicated. The GarageBand app, which is free on your iPhone, is like having a secret, easy-to-use recording studio in your pocket. You can import any song or audio file, easily trim it down to your favorite 30-second clip—the perfect guitar solo or chorus—and then directly export it as a custom ringtone. It’s a surprisingly simple process that gives you complete creative control, letting you turn any sound imaginable into your personal anthem.
I’m just going to say it: Live wallpapers are a battery-draining gimmick.
The Leaky Faucet in Your Power Tank
A live wallpaper that animates every time you press on your screen is like having a tiny, constantly dripping faucet connected to your phone’s battery. Each little animation, each little “drip,” consumes a small amount of power. While one drip is insignificant, over the course of a day, those hundreds of little drips add up to a noticeable puddle of wasted energy. A beautiful static wallpaper, on the other hand, is a sealed faucet. It provides all the beauty without the slow, constant, and unnecessary drain on your battery life.
The reason you can’t find anything is because your Home Screen is organized by installation date, not by purpose.
The Grocery Store with No Aisles
Imagine a grocery store where items are not organized into aisles like “Dairy” or “Produce.” Instead, they are just placed on the shelves in the random order that they arrived from the truck. It would be impossible to find the milk. That is what your Home Screen is like when you just let new apps pile up. Organizing your apps into folders based on what they do—like “Watch,” “Listen,” or “Create”—is like creating logical aisles. It turns a chaotic warehouse into an intuitive and efficient space where you can find exactly what you need.
If you’re still letting every app have a red notification badge, you’re losing your sanity to notification anxiety.
The Unending Pile of Unopened Mail
Imagine if every single piece of mail you ever received—important bills, junk mail, and flyers—was left in a giant, unopened pile on your desk, and each one had a bright red “Urgent!” sticker on it. That is what notification badges do. They create a constant, stressful, visual reminder of all the “unread” things demanding your attention. Turning off badges for non-essential apps is like sorting your mail. It allows you to see the truly urgent stickers while letting the junk mail sit quietly in the background, preserving your focus and your sanity.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you can’t change the default browser or email client.
Choosing Your Own Front Door
For a long time, using an iPhone meant you had to use Safari and Mail for everything. It was like living in a house where you were not allowed to change the locks on the front door. That era is over. You now have the freedom to choose your own “front door” to the internet and your “mailbox” for your messages. You can set Chrome as your default browser or Gmail as your default email app. It’s a powerful customization that lets you use the tools you’re most comfortable with, making your iPhone truly your own.
I wish I knew about the Magnifier accessibility shortcut when I was trying to read tiny print.
The Pocket-Sized Magnifying Glass
We’ve all been there: trying to read the microscopic print on a medicine bottle or the serial number on the back of a gadget. The Magnifier is like having a powerful, high-tech magnifying glass built directly into your phone. You can set it as a shortcut, and with a triple-click of the side button, your camera will transform into an intelligent magnifier. You can zoom in, turn on a flashlight for better light, and even freeze the frame to get a steady look. It’s an incredibly useful real-world tool that’s been hiding in your phone all along.
99% of people have never changed the double-tap or long-press settings on their AirPods.
The Secret Buttons on Your Earbuds
Your AirPods are not just for listening; they are tiny, wearable computers with customizable buttons. By default, a double-tap might play or pause your music. But in your settings, you can become an engineer and change that command. You could make a double-tap on your left AirPod skip to the next song, and a double-tap on your right one activate Siri. It’s like adding secret, custom-programmed buttons to your ears, giving you faster and more personalized control over your audio without ever having to touch your phone.
This one small habit of rotating your wallpaper daily using a Shortcut will keep your phone feeling fresh.
The Art Gallery with a Daily Exhibit
Even the most beautiful painting can become boring if you look at it every single day. A daily rotating wallpaper is like owning a magical art gallery where the main exhibit changes every morning. You can create a photo album of your favorite landscapes or art, and then use a simple shortcut automation to tell your phone to pick a random one and set it as your wallpaper every day at sunrise. It’s a delightful, zero-effort way to be greeted with a fresh, beautiful, and surprising new look every single day.
Use custom text replacements to create your own shortcuts, not just for correcting typos.
The Magical Incantation for Your Keyboard
Text Replacement is often used to fix common typos, but its real power is in creating your own secret, magical language. It’s like an incantation. You can teach your phone that when you type the magic word “eml”, it should instantly transform into your full, long email address. You could make “@@” become your work signature, or “##” become your phone number. It’s a powerful shortcut system that lets you type out long, repetitive phrases with just a few keystrokes, saving you time and effort in every app.
Stop letting your apps arrange themselves. Do group them into folders based on verbs (e.g., Watch, Listen, Create).
The Tool Chest Organized by Job
A disorganized tool chest is a mess. A well-organized one groups tools by their job: all the hammers together, all the screwdrivers together. You should organize your phone the same way. Instead of vague folder names like “Utilities,” try organizing your apps by the verb or the action you want to take. A “Watch” folder can contain Netflix and YouTube. A “Listen” folder can have Spotify and Podcasts. A “Create” folder can hold your camera and notes. This action-based system makes it incredibly intuitive to find the exact tool you need for the job.
Stop using a bright wallpaper at night. Do use a wallpaper that supports dark mode and changes automatically.
The Window That Tints Itself
Using a bright, sunny beach wallpaper at night is like staring out a window into broad daylight when it’s midnight. It’s jarring and strains your eyes. Modern iPhones allow you to choose wallpapers that have two different versions: a light one and a dark one. The phone is then smart enough to act like a self-tinting window. During the day, it will show you the bright, sunny version. But as your phone switches to dark mode at night, the wallpaper will automatically and seamlessly shift to its darker, moonlit variant, making it more comfortable to view.
The #1 secret for a minimalist setup is hiding entire Home Screen pages.
Closing the Doors to Messy Rooms
Imagine your house has several rooms. Some are neat and tidy, and others are messy storage rooms. Hiding a Home Screen page is like closing the door to one of those messy rooms. You don’t have to throw anything away; you’re simply hiding the clutter from your daily view. You can pile all your rarely-used apps onto a single page and then hide it. Your phone will look clean and minimalist, with only one or two essential pages, but you can always “open the door” and unhide that page if you ever need to find something in storage.
I’m just going to say it: The perfect Home Screen has only one page.
The Perfectly Organized Studio Apartment
A sprawling mansion with dozens of rooms can be confusing and inefficient. A perfectly designed studio apartment, on the other hand, has everything you need within arm’s reach. It’s a single, intentional, and highly efficient space. A one-page Home Screen is that studio apartment. It forces you to be deliberate about what is truly essential in your digital life. With your most important apps and widgets on that single screen and everything else tucked away in the App Library “closet,” you create a space of ultimate focus and simplicity.
The reason your custom icons are annoying is because they launch the Shortcuts app first.
The Butler Who Announces Himself
Using custom icons via the Shortcuts app is like hiring a butler to open your doors for you. It looks elegant. However, every time you want to open a door (launch an app), the butler (Shortcuts app) first steps in front of you, bows, and announces, “I am now opening the door for you,” before it finally opens. This small, consistent delay and the jarring flash of the Shortcuts app can make the whole experience feel slow and clunky. It’s the price you pay for that custom look, a small but constant friction in your daily workflow.
If you’re still using the default “Sent from my iPhone” email signature, you’re losing a chance to appear more professional.
The Generic ‘Hello’ vs. The Business Card
Ending a business email with “Sent from my iPhone” is the professional equivalent of answering your work phone with a casual “Hello?” instead of a proper greeting. It signals a lack of attention to detail. Setting up a custom, professional signature—with your name, title, and company—is like automatically attaching your digital business card to every single message. It takes 30 seconds to set up and instantly makes every email you send, no matter how quickly you type it, feel more polished, credible, and professional.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that iPhone users don’t care about customization.
The Quiet Interior Designer
There’s a stereotype that iPhone users prefer a simple, locked-down experience. This is like saying that people who appreciate minimalist architecture don’t care about interior design. The truth is that iPhone users deeply value personalization, but they often prefer it to be elegant, cohesive, and integrated, rather than chaotic. They are the quiet interior designers, carefully choosing the perfect wallpaper, curating their widgets, and organizing their apps to create a space that is both beautiful and functional, proving that a love for simplicity and a desire for personalization can coexist.
I wish I knew that I could use AssistiveTouch to create custom on-screen buttons for common actions.
The Floating Remote Control for Your Phone
Imagine you had a small, floating remote control that you could place anywhere on your screen. This remote has custom buttons that you can program to do anything: take a screenshot, lock your screen, or open the Control Center. That is AssistiveTouch. It’s an incredibly powerful accessibility feature that acts as a customizable, on-screen shortcut menu. It gives you a “soft” home button and a palette of powerful actions, making it easier to use your phone one-handed or to create shortcuts for your most-used functions.
99% of users don’t know they can change the color filters of their display for a unique look or to aid with color blindness.
The Custom Sunglasses for Your Screen
Your iPhone screen is like looking at the world through a clear pane of glass. But in your accessibility settings, you can apply different color filters, which is like putting on a custom pair of sunglasses. You can tint the entire screen red for a “darkroom” effect, or apply special filters designed to make colors easier to distinguish for people with color blindness. It’s a powerful tool that can either create a unique, stylized look for your phone or make the screen dramatically more legible for your specific vision.
This one small action of choosing a custom alarm sound will make waking up slightly less terrible.
The Gentle Nudge vs. The Fire Alarm
Waking up to the default, blaring “Radar” alarm is like being jolted awake by a fire drill every single morning. It’s a stressful, unpleasant, and anxiety-inducing way to start your day. Taking a minute to go into your settings and choose a gentler, more melodic sound is like being woken up by a gentle nudge or the sound of soft chimes. While waking up is never fun, this small change can transform the very first moment of your day from one of panic into one of relative calm.
Use different Focus Modes to change your watch face automatically, not just your phone’s Home Screen.
The Watch That Dresses for the Occasion
You wouldn’t wear a flashy, complicated watch to the gym, and you wouldn’t wear a simple fitness tracker to a fancy dinner. Your Apple Watch can be just as smart. By linking your watch faces to your Focus Modes, your watch can automatically “dress for the occasion.” When your “Work” Focus turns on, it can switch to a simple, professional face. When you start a workout, it can automatically switch to a large, data-rich fitness face. It makes your watch feel context-aware and intelligent.
Stop accepting the default app names. Do use a trick with Shortcuts to rename them on your Home Screen.
The Nicknames for Your Tools
While you can’t truly rename an app, there’s a clever workaround. It’s like putting a custom label on a tool in your workshop. Using the Shortcuts app, you can create a simple shortcut that does only one thing: open a specific app. When you add this shortcut to your Home Screen, you can give it any custom name and icon you want. So, you can change “Google Maps” to just “Maps,” or “Spotify” to “Music,” or even rename an app with an emoji, giving your Home Screen a truly personalized and unique naming convention.
Stop being overwhelmed by settings. Do use the search bar at the top of the Settings app instead.
The GPS for a Sprawling City
The Settings app on your iPhone is like a huge, sprawling city with hundreds of streets and alleys. Trying to find one specific setting, like “Battery,” is like trying to find a single address without a map. The search bar at the very top of the Settings app is the GPS for that city. Instead of wandering through endless menus, you can simply type what you’re looking for, and it will instantly give you a direct, clickable link to that exact location, turning a frustrating search into an effortless journey.
The #1 hack for a clean dock is to have only four (or fewer) of your most essential apps.
The Key Rack by Your Front Door
Your dock is the key rack that hangs right by your digital front door. It should hold only the absolute essential “keys” that you grab every single time you leave the house—your phone, your messages, your music. By limiting it to the four (or even three) apps that are central to your daily life, you create a clean, uncluttered, and highly efficient base for your Home Screen. It ensures that your most critical tools are always in the most accessible and predictable location.
I’m just going to say it: Matching your iPhone case to your wallpaper is a power move.
The Coordinated Outfit for Your Digital Life
Matching your iPhone case to your wallpaper is the digital equivalent of perfectly coordinating your handbag with your shoes. It’s a small detail that most people won’t notice, but for those who do, it signals a high level of intention, polish, and design-savviness. It shows that you’ve considered your phone not just as a tool, but as a complete aesthetic object. It’s a subtle but powerful move that elevates your device from a simple gadget to a curated personal accessory.
The reason you can’t stick with a new layout is because you’re changing too much at once.
Rearranging Your Entire Kitchen at Once
Imagine you decided to completely reorganize your entire kitchen in one afternoon. You move the plates, the silverware, the spices, everything. For the next week, you’ll be completely lost. You’ll open the wrong drawer a dozen times a day out of habit, get frustrated, and want to change it back. The same is true for your Home Screen. Instead of a radical redesign, try making one small, incremental change at a time. Move one app, or create one folder. This allows your muscle memory to adapt slowly, making the new layout feel natural instead of alien.
If you’re still using the standard keyboard click sound, you’re losing the satisfying feedback of the haptic keyboard.
The Silent Click of a High-End Pen
The audible keyboard clicks are like the loud, annoying “clicky” sound of a cheap ballpoint pen. It’s distracting for you and for everyone around you. Turning on the haptic feedback for your keyboard is like switching to a high-end, weighted fountain pen. It’s silent to the outside world, but with every letter you type, you feel a subtle, precise, and deeply satisfying “thump” under your finger. It provides all the positive feedback of a physical key press without any of the annoying noise, making typing a more pleasant, tactile experience.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that a customized iPhone is an unprofessional iPhone.
The Bespoke Suit vs. The Off-the-Rack Uniform
Some people believe that to look “professional,” you must use your phone exactly as it came out of the box. This is like believing that the only professional attire is a generic, ill-fitting uniform. A thoughtfully customized iPhone is like a bespoke, tailored suit. Arranging your apps for efficiency, choosing a clean, professional wallpaper, and setting up a custom email signature are all signs of a person who is organized, intentional, and in command of their tools. It’s the ultimate mark of a true professional.
I wish I knew about the custom “Do Not Disturb” messages for when I’m driving or in a meeting.
The Custom ‘Away’ Message for Your Life
The “Driving” Focus Mode can automatically reply to texts for you. But many people don’t know you can customize that reply. It’s like setting a custom “Out of Office” message for your life. Instead of the generic reply, you can change it to something more personal or specific, like “Hey! I’m currently driving with the kids, but I’ll call you as soon as I get home safely.” It’s a powerful way to manage expectations and communicate more effectively, even when you can’t actually communicate.
99% of people don’t use the per-app settings to customize text size and other options for specific apps.
The Custom Magnifying Glass for Each Book
Changing the text size for your whole phone is great. But what if you only need the text to be bigger in your News app, but want it to stay small in your Messages app? Per-app settings are like having a collection of custom magnifying glasses for each of your books. You can add a “Text Size” button to your Control Center, and then, while you’re inside any app, you can adjust the text size for just that app. It gives you a granular level of control, allowing you to create the perfect reading experience for every different context.
This one small action of putting all your “junk” apps into a single folder on the last page will de-clutter your life.
The Digital Junk Drawer
Every house has a junk drawer. It’s where you put the random things that you don’t use often but can’t bring yourself to throw away. Your iPhone needs one too. Create a single folder, maybe call it “Utilities” or just “Stuff,” on the very last page of your Home Screen. Then, drag all those apps you have to keep but rarely use—the airline app you used once, your carrier’s account app—into that one folder. This one action will instantly de-clutter your main screens, tucking away the chaos into one neat, out-of-the-way drawer.
Use the “Always-On Display” settings to show your wallpaper, not just a black screen, for more personalization.
The Faded Painting vs. The Blank Wall
The standard Always-On Display is a black screen with a faint clock. It’s functional, but lifeless. It’s a blank wall. The setting that allows you to show a dimmed version of your wallpaper is like having a beautiful painting on that wall that is always faintly visible, even when the main lights are off. It allows your phone to retain its personality and beauty even when it’s asleep on your desk. It turns a boring black rectangle into a personal, dynamic object that is always, subtly, yours.
5- I’m just going to say it: You don’t need a widget for the weather; you can just look outside.
The Weather Rock vs. The Meteorological Station
A weather widget is a powerful tool, showing you the hourly forecast, the chance of rain, and the UV index. Relying on looking out the window is like using a “weather rock”—a rock you hang on a string that is “wet” if it’s raining and “shadowy” if it’s sunny. It tells you what is happening at this very second, but it gives you absolutely no information about what will happen in the next hour or the next day. A widget is a window into the future; the window is just a window into the present.
The reason your iPhone doesn’t feel like “yours” is because you haven’t customized the lock screen.
The Front Door of Your Digital Home
Your Lock Screen is the front door to your digital home. It’s the first thing you see every time you interact with your phone. Leaving it with the default settings is like having a generic, numbered door that looks like every other door in the apartment building. By choosing a wallpaper you love, adding widgets for information you need, and customizing the font and color of the clock, you are painting your front door your favorite color and putting your name on it. It’s the first and most important step to making your device feel truly personal.
If you’re still using a photo of your pet as your wallpaper, you’re making it hard to see your app labels.
The Camouflaged Text
We all love our pets, but a photo of a fluffy, multi-colored dog or cat is often a terrible choice for a Home Screen wallpaper. The complex patterns and colors of their fur create a busy background that acts like camouflage for the white text of your app labels. The names of your apps become difficult to read, blending into the background and forcing your eyes to work harder every time you look at your screen. A simpler, more uniform background will always make your phone easier and more pleasant to read.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need a third-party app for good wallpapers.
The Art Gallery You Already Own
People will spend hours scrolling through ad-filled wallpaper apps, searching for the perfect background. This is a lie. The most beautiful, high-quality, and personal wallpapers are already sitting in your own Photos app. That stunning sunset you captured on vacation, that beautiful close-up of a flower from your garden, or that abstract pattern you saw on a wall—these are unique to you. Your own life is the best source for a meaningful and beautiful wallpaper; you just need to look through your own personal art gallery.
I wish I knew about the “Guided Access” feature to lock my iPhone to a single app for my kids.
The Digital Playpen
Handing your unlocked iPhone to a child is like letting a toddler run free in a delicate china shop. They can wander into your work emails, accidentally buy something on Amazon, or rearrange your Home Screen. Guided Access is a digital playpen. Before you hand over your phone, you can triple-click the side button and lock it to a single app, like a specific game or a video. The child is now safely contained within that one app and cannot leave it to cause chaos elsewhere. It’s an essential tool for any parent.
99% of users have never tried creating a photo shuffle wallpaper for their lock screen.
The Digital Photo Frame on Your Lock Screen
A digital photo frame on a desk will cycle through a collection of your favorite photos, giving you a delightful new memory to look at every so often. You can turn your iPhone’s Lock Screen into that same experience. The Photo Shuffle wallpaper lets you select a group of your favorite people, pets, or places. Now, every time you tap your screen or pick up your phone, you’ll be greeted with a different, beautiful, and surprising photo from your own collection. It’s a wonderful way to relive your best memories throughout the day.
This one small action of changing your default browser to one you prefer will improve your daily web browsing.
Choosing Your Favorite Car for Your Daily Commute
Imagine you own two cars: a standard sedan and your favorite sports car. But every single time you leave your house, you are forced to take the sedan unless you specifically remember to go to the other garage. This is what it’s like to not change your default browser. By setting your preferred browser—like Chrome or Firefox—as the default, you are telling your iPhone, “Always hand me the keys to the sports car.” Now, every link you tap, anywhere on your phone, will automatically open in the browser you love most.
Use a custom Memoji for your contact photo, not an old, blurry picture of yourself.
The Animated Avatar vs. The Grainy ID Photo
Using an old, low-resolution photo for your contact picture is like using a grainy, ten-year-old driver’s license photo as your profile picture. A custom Memoji is a vibrant, high-definition, and perfectly lit animated version of you. It’s a fun and modern way to represent yourself that you can constantly update with new outfits and expressions. It will show up on your friends’ phones when you call, and it will represent you across the Apple ecosystem, giving you a clean and consistent digital identity.
Stop letting notification badges dictate your actions. Do turn them off for non-essential apps.
The Tyranny of the Red Dot
The red notification badge is a tyrant. It sits on your screen, screaming at you, creating a psychological itch that you feel compelled to scratch. It pulls you into apps you didn’t intend to open, just to make the red dot go away. This is a trap. You can reclaim your power by turning off the badges for any app that is not truly urgent. Let your social media and shopping apps sit quietly. This simple action transforms your phone from a demanding taskmaster into a calm and obedient tool.
Stop trying to find the perfect all-in-one widget. Do use a multiple, smaller widgets for specific information.
The Swiss Army Knife vs. The Tool Belt
An all-in-one widget that tries to show you the weather, your calendar, and your reminders all at once is like a bulky Swiss Army knife with too many tools. It’s often cluttered and not particularly good at any one thing. A better approach is to use a “tool belt” of several small, dedicated widgets. A small widget just for the weather, and another small one just for your calendar. This allows you to create a more modular, clean, and scannable layout where each tool does its one job perfectly.
The #1 hack for theming your iPhone is to combine a custom wallpaper, custom widgets, and custom app icons.
The Three Pillars of Interior Design
To truly redecorate a room, you need to coordinate three things: the color of the walls, the art you hang on them, and the style of the furniture. To truly “theme” your iPhone, you need to coordinate these same three digital pillars. The wallpaper is your wall color. The widgets are your art. And the custom app icons are your furniture. When you make all three of these elements work together with a cohesive color palette and style, you can transform your generic Home Screen into a stunning, personalized, and beautifully designed masterpiece.
I’m just going to say it: A phone with its default settings is a sign of a boring person.
The House with No Furniture
Using a phone exactly as it came out of the box is like moving into a house and never bothering to put in any furniture, hang any pictures, or paint any walls. It’s a sterile, impersonal, and deeply uninspired space. Your phone is the most personal piece of technology you own. The choices you make in how you arrange it—your wallpaper, your ringtone, your app layout—are a powerful form of self-expression. A default phone isn’t just a phone; it’s a missed opportunity to inject your own personality into the world.
The reason you get tired of your setup is because you’re not using a dynamic wallpaper that changes throughout the day.
The Painting of a Single Moment
A static wallpaper is a beautiful painting of a single moment in time—a sunrise, a sunny afternoon. A dynamic wallpaper is like a magical window. It subtly and slowly changes its lighting and appearance to match the actual time of day. It will be bright and vibrant in the morning, warm and golden in the afternoon, and dark and starry at night. This gentle, constant evolution keeps your screen feeling alive and connected to the world around you, preventing the visual boredom that comes from looking at the same static image all day.
If you’re still manually enabling DND, you’re losing the power of smart, automated Focus Modes.
The Butler You Have to Constantly Instruct
Manually turning on Do Not Disturb is like having a butler that you have to find and instruct for every single task. “Jeeves, please make the house quiet, I’m working now.” Smart, automated Focus Modes are like a butler who has already memorized your entire schedule. He knows that when you arrive at the office, the house should go quiet. He knows that at 10 PM, it’s time to dim the lights. It puts your digital environment on autopilot, creating the perfect atmosphere for every part of your day without you ever having to ask.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you can’t have an organized iPhone.
The Myth of the Messy Genius
There’s a strange myth that an iPhone is just a naturally chaotic device, and that a cluttered Home Screen is just a sign of a busy person. This is a lie used to justify digital disorganization. With powerful tools like the App Library, smart folders, and customizable Home Screens, the iPhone gives you all the tools you need to create a beautifully organized and efficient space. An organized iPhone is not an impossible dream; it’s the result of a few minutes of intentional effort that pays off every single day.
I wish I knew about the “Classic Invert” for a true old-school dark mode experience.
The Photographic Negative of Your Screen
Long before official “Dark Mode” existed, there was a quirky accessibility setting called “Invert Colors.” It was like looking at a photographic negative of your screen. White became black, black became white, but all the colors became weird and distorted. “Classic Invert” is that original, psychedelic mode. While Smart Invert is better, Classic Invert is a fun, nostalgic trip back to the early days of iPhone customization. It’s a strange, high-contrast mode that gives your phone a unique and jarringly retro look.
99% of people don’t know they can add custom fonts to their iPhone for use in apps like Pages and Keynote.
The Custom Typewriter Keys for Your Phone
Your iPhone comes with a beautiful set of built-in fonts, like a high-quality typewriter. But for designers, writers, or anyone who wants a specific look for their documents, you can actually install your own custom fonts. It’s like being able to swap out the keys on your typewriter to use a completely different style of lettering. By downloading an app that provides fonts, you can install them on your system and use them in creative apps like Pages, Keynote, and others, giving your documents a truly unique and professional typographic flair.
This one small action of changing the name of your iPhone will make it easier to identify on networks.
The Name Tag on Your Luggage
When you use features like AirDrop or Personal Hotspot, your phone’s name is broadcast to other devices. The default, “John’s iPhone,” is like having a generic, pre-printed name tag on your luggage at the airport. It’s fine, but it can be easily confused with others. Changing your phone’s name in the settings to something more unique or fun—like “The Millennium Falcon” or “Blue Phone”—is like putting a distinct, personalized tag on your bag. It makes your device instantly recognizable and adds a small, secret touch of personality.
Use Accessibility shortcuts to quickly toggle settings like grayscale or smart invert, not digging through menus.
The Secret Light Switch for Your Screen
Imagine you had a special light switch that, with a quick triple-tap, could instantly change the entire color palette of your room. The Accessibility Shortcut does exactly this for your phone. You can program the triple-click of your side button to be a shortcut for a specific feature. You could use it to instantly turn on the Magnifier, or to switch your entire screen to grayscale for a focused, distraction-free reading mode. It’s a powerful “secret switch” that lets you access advanced features without ever having to dig through the Settings menu.
Stop using the same Apple ID photo for years. Do update it with a new Memoji or picture.
The Outdated ID Card in Your Wallet
Your Apple ID photo appears everywhere—on your contact card, in iMessage, and in the App Store. Using the same blurry, outdated photo from ten years ago is like carrying around a driver’s license with a picture of you from high school. It doesn’t reflect who you are today. Taking a moment to update it with a fresh, new picture or a fun, personalized Memoji is like getting a new ID card. It instantly updates your digital identity across the entire ecosystem, presenting a more current and accurate version of yourself.
Stop letting the App Store put new apps on your Home Screen. Do send them directly to the App Library instead.
The Mail That Goes Directly to the Filing Cabinet
Letting every new app install directly onto your Home Screen is like having your mailman dump every single letter, package, and piece of junk mail right in the middle of your clean living room floor. In your settings, you can choose to have new apps sent directly to the App Library instead. This is like telling your mailman to put everything directly into the correct folder in your filing cabinet. Your living room (Home Screen) stays clean and uncluttered, and your new app is neatly filed away, ready for when you need it.
The #1 secret for a personalized experience is curating your Siri suggestions by telling it what you don’t like.
Training Your Personal Assistant
Siri tries to be a helpful assistant by suggesting apps and shortcuts it thinks you’ll want. Sometimes, it gets it wrong. When you see a suggestion you don’t like, don’t just ignore it; train your assistant. You can long-press on any suggestion and tell Siri, “Suggest This Less.” This is like giving your assistant direct, constructive feedback. Over time, this training will refine Siri’s understanding of your habits, leading to smarter, more accurate, and truly personalized suggestions that actually help you instead of annoying you.
I’m just going to say it: The best widget is no widget.
The Beauty of a Clean Wall
Widgets are like paintings you hang on the wall of your room. They can be beautiful and informative, but they also create visual clutter. The ultimate minimalist statement is to have no paintings at all. A Home Screen with nothing but your perfectly chosen wallpaper and your essential dock apps is the digital equivalent of a clean, serene, and perfectly painted wall. It’s a statement of focus and simplicity. It creates a space of pure digital zen, free from the constant distraction of information, however beautifully it’s presented.
The reason your custom theme looks bad is because your wallpaper and icons don’t have a cohesive color palette.
The Clashing Outfit
Imagine you get dressed in the dark. You might put on a bright orange shirt, purple pants, and green shoes. Each item might be nice on its own, but together, they create a clashing, chaotic mess. This is what happens when you choose a busy wallpaper and a set of custom icons that don’t share a similar style or color palette. A successful theme, like a successful outfit, is built on cohesion. The elements need to complement each other, creating a single, unified aesthetic that is pleasing to the eye.
If you’re still using the default Maps voice, you’re missing out on other accents and languages.
Choosing Your Personal Tour Guide
The default navigation voice is like a generic, robotic tour guide. It gets you where you need to go, but it has no personality. In your Maps settings, you can audition and hire a new tour guide. You can choose a guide with a charming British accent, a friendly Australian one, or dozens of others. This small change can make your daily commute feel a little more novel and personalized. It’s a simple way to add a touch of character to one of the most-used features of your phone, making your drives a bit more enjoyable.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need to be a designer to create a nice Home Screen.
You Don’t Need to Be an Architect to Decorate a Room
You don’t need to be a professional architect to make your living room a pleasant and comfortable space. You just need to know what you like. The same is true for your Home Screen. You don’t need a degree in graphic design. You simply need to choose a wallpaper that makes you happy, place the apps you use most in an easy-to-reach spot, and hide the clutter you don’t need. A good Home Screen is not about following complex design rules; it’s about creating a space that is functional and enjoyable for you.
I wish I knew I could rearrange the filters in the Camera app to put my favorites first.
The Custom Filter Wheel
The Camera app has a whole collection of filters, but your favorite one might be buried at the end of the list, forcing you to swipe every single time. You can actually be the editor of this list. In the Camera settings, you can rearrange the filters, just like organizing your favorite pens on your desk. By putting your go-to filters—like “Vivid” or “Noir”—at the very beginning of the list, you make your own custom, efficient workflow, ensuring your favorite creative tools are always just one tap away.
99% of users don’t customize the “Today” summary in the Weather app.
Your Personal Weather Report
The default Weather app gives you a ton of information. But you can customize the “Today” summary to be your own personal weather report, tailored to what you care about. If you’re a photographer, you might want to know the exact time of sunset. If you’re a runner, you might care most about the air quality and wind speed. You can reorder these modules so that the information that is most relevant to your daily life appears at the very top, giving you a custom-built forecast every single morning.
This one small action of setting up a StandBy mode display will turn your charging iPhone into a smart clock.
The Phone That Moonlights as a Clock
When your phone is charging on your nightstand, it’s just a boring, black rectangle. StandBy mode is like giving your phone a useful part-time job for the night. When you place it sideways while it’s charging, it can transform into a beautiful, full-screen smart clock. You can customize it to show your photos, your calendar, or smart widgets. It turns a useless, idle object into a functional and beautiful nightstand companion, giving you at-a-glance information without you ever having to pick it up.
Use the Contacts widget to quickly call or message your favorite people, not searching for them every time.
The Speed Dial for Your Home Screen
The Contacts widget is the modern version of the old speed dial buttons we used to have on our landlines. Instead of digging through your long list of contacts every time you want to call your partner or text your best friend, you can place a small widget right on your Home Screen. This widget can show the faces of your four or six most important people. Now, calling or messaging them is a single, direct tap. It’s a simple, powerful shortcut that puts your favorite people front and center in your digital life.
Stop accepting the default app suggestions in the App Library. Do drag your own preferred apps into the folders.
The Re-Organized Filing Cabinet
The App Library is a smart filing cabinet, but sometimes its automatic organization is not quite right. For example, it might put a game you love in the “Entertainment” folder instead of the “Games” folder. The good news is that you are the head librarian. You can press and hold on any app and drag it from one category folder to another, or even drag an app out of a folder and onto your Home Screen. This allows you to fine-tune the automatic organization to perfectly match your own mental map of where things should be.
Stop making your iPhone look like an Android. Do embrace the iOS aesthetic instead.
The Modern Apartment vs. The Tudor House
iOS has a distinct design language: clean, simple, and elegant, like a modern, minimalist apartment. Trying to force it to look like an Android, with its different design philosophy, is like trying to put fake Tudor-style beams on the ceiling of that modern apartment. The result is often a clashing, awkward, and inauthentic mess. Instead of fighting against the core design, the most beautiful iPhone setups are the ones that embrace the iOS aesthetic and work within its elegant constraints to create something that is both personal and cohesive.