Tech

How to customize app icons in iOS 14

Here's your guide to making iOS 14 app icons your own.

The introduction of iOS 14 has brought quite a few noticeable changes to the iPhone experience, including some not-so-intuitive ways of organizing and customizing your Home Screen.

You might've already seen examples like this one...

Or this...

While not exactly an intended feature by Apple, the ability to customize things like app icons has appealed to the more aesthetically-minded iPhone users.

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If you count yourself among them, here's a step-by-step guide to customizing app icons in iOS 14...

First...

If you're customizing your Home Screen aesthetic its a good idea to start by collecting the app icons you want to use. Once you find your preferred picturs, add them to your photo library.

Shortcuts

Once you've got your aesthetic on lock, navigate to Apple's Shortcut application and follow these steps...

Tap the + button in the upper right hand and then choose "add action."

Then choose "scripting" and tap "open app."

Once you tap "open app" you can choose which app you want the shortcut to access.

For demonstration purposes we're choosing the calculator.

Make sure to rename the app in the text field so you know what it is and then add it to your Home Screen.

Once you tap "add to Home Screen' you can select a photo from your library by tapping the icon.

Tap "Add' in the upper right hand which will add the created icon to your Home Screen.

Here's the process in real-time.

As you may have surmised from the roundabout process described here, the ability to customize apps through Shortcut isn't a feature as much as it is a loophole, but for now it's the best option available.

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Here's to hoping Apple simplifies the process in the future...

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