On Android, changing your app icon is rather easy and straightforward. In case you didn’t know, it is also possible on iOS, except that it is a slightly more convoluted process and not necessarily the best way. However, iOS 14 has opened up the door to greater degrees of customization with home screen widgets, and if you’re truly trying to craft a home screen that’s unique to you, changing up the icons might be the next step.
The good news is that while the process might be slightly more convoluted, we’ve highlighted the steps that you’ll need to take if you’re trying to take your customization to the next level.
Customizing iOS app icons with Siri Shortcuts
Apple previously introduced a feature called Siri Shortcuts to iOS. This allowed users to create custom scripts that performed multiple actions when interacted with. One of the features of Shortcuts is the ability to add the shortcut to your home screen with a custom icon, which users have taken advantage of.
- Launch the Shortcuts app
- Tap the + button at the top right corner of the screen
- Tap Add Action
- Select Scripting
- Under “Apps”, choose Open App
- Tap on Choose and select the app you want Shortcuts to open (in this case we’ve chosen WhatsApp)
- Tap the three dots icon located at the top right corner of the screen below “Next”
- Enter a name for the Shortcut and tap the icon next to it
- Select the icon and background color and tap Done
- Tap Add to Home Screen
- Alternatively, if you have a custom image that you prefer to use over the default set of symbols that Apple provides, tap the icon and then select either Choose Photo or Choose File if you’ve already uploaded the image somewhere
- Tap Add
- Tap Done again
- Tap Done once more
- You should now see the icon on your home screen with the icon and color that you’ve chosen
Do take note that with this process, whenever you tap on the icon on your home screen, it will launch the Shortcuts app first, run the script that you created, and then only launch the app. This is slightly slower, although we heard that in iOS 14.3, Apple will let users skip the middle step entirely, so in the meantime, users will need to live with it.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, iOS, Ios 14 and Social Hit.