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00:00Hey, what's up, MKBHD here, and I'm sure you start to notice now a lot of people customizing
00:09iPhone home screens, now that it's possible, now that iOS 14 is public.
00:14And look, first of all, welcome to the party.
00:16We've been customizing home screens on phones for, what, 10 years now, 10 plus years?
00:23But it is kind of fun that it does feel a little bit new again now that Apple's finally
00:26doing it on their phone.
00:28So let's get into that.
00:29So I've already done a whole video all about iOS 14's new features, everything that's new.
00:34So if you want to check that out, that's linked right below the like button.
00:37But I noticed a lot of people going back to that video and asking home screen questions,
00:43just as people figure out that they can pretty much go ham on their home screen.
00:47So for this video, just for home screens, I'm going to do three different levels of
00:52home screen customization, right?
00:54So level one, beginner, someone who'd never really thought much about this before, or
00:59you know, people who just got an iPhone.
01:01Level two, enthusiast, maybe a little more willing to get your hands dirty, a little
01:06more willing to get complex.
01:08And then level three, former Android user, full tilt customization, all of the above.
01:14So let's get into it.
01:15So here is a level one setup to start.
01:18This one's for you, mom and dad.
01:20So you've probably gotten used to your iPhone home screen basically just looking like this,
01:24just a bunch of apps, a list of them, just rows and rows of apps and folders, some stuff
01:28you don't need, right?
01:29But it's finally time to mess with widgets now that we've derived with iOS 14.
01:33So beautiful, glanceable information, that's the point of them.
01:36And what better widget to start with than the stock default Apple ones.
01:40So like I've shown, you just go into jiggle mode, I just go into jiggle mode, and then
01:44hit the plus in the corner.
01:46And there's some good ones, Apple's built in.
01:48A popular one right now might be the photos or notes.
01:51But I think maybe the all time most popular app is just going to be their weather app,
01:55just glanceable weather.
01:56So you pick a size of the widget you want, then add it, place it where you want, boom.
02:01That's the first level, right?
02:03Another good one that obviously works best if you have several Apple devices is the battery
02:07one.
02:08So you can monitor the watch battery, the phone battery, and if you have AirPods or
02:12really any other wireless headphones via Bluetooth, they'll all show up here, which is cool.
02:16It's not clickable or anything, but it's just literally showing you glanceable information.
02:20The most basic purpose of a widget.
02:22So that's it.
02:23That's already an improvement.
02:24And then of course, the other thing to take advantage of now that there's the app library
02:27over here is getting rid of the icons or folders or stuff you don't need to be on your home
02:33screen.
02:34So again, instead of having pages and pages of apps and folders of apps, you don't need
02:37much on your home screen.
02:38You've probably seen this before, but yes, you can now hit the dots at the bottom and
02:42go ahead and uncheck a home screen so it doesn't show up anymore.
02:46And boom.
02:47So now you don't have to have unnecessary crap like you always have here basically lets
02:51you hide apps.
02:52But the best part of that, that I actually haven't seen any Android launchers do, at
02:56least in my experience yet, is that it saves those hidden pages so you can bring them back
03:01whenever you want.
03:02So you can have like a weekend home screen page that you only bring back up on the weekends
03:06with, I don't know, Yelp and Strava, maybe some games, whatever you do on the weekends.
03:11So that's pretty cool.
03:12So pro tip, you can actually make your only home screen now have no apps on it at all,
03:18just your dock.
03:19So if you're into the minimalism thing, that is available to you.
03:22But again, that's it.
03:23There's not many pro tips for level one.
03:24All right, so level two.
03:26This is a little more adventurous now.
03:29So this is when you might start to get into third party widgets.
03:32So Apple makes some pretty sweet widgets, sure.
03:35But now that iOS 14 is out, developers are now starting to get into making their own
03:39best dedicated widgets, the most beautiful, the most functional, the most awesome, glanceable
03:44information they possibly can in a widget.
03:47So there's a lot of good ones here.
03:48I'm going to share some of my favorites.
03:49So there's this one called time page that just makes a straight up better looking, more
03:52minimal widget than Apple's weather widget.
03:56It's not a weather app.
03:57It's actually for something totally different for productivity.
03:59But I happen to find their weather widget pretty sweet.
04:03So hey, I'll take it.
04:04There's also hey weather widget, which offers a few other sizes and a little more customization.
04:09The Google widget on iOS is actually pretty nice here.
04:12So the bigger one gives you not just the bar to do a quick Google search, but you can also
04:17quickly start a voice search.
04:19You can start an incognito Google text search or open Google Lens to basically Google search
04:25for the image or object that whatever's in front of you, which is pretty sweet when it
04:30works.
04:31Color widgets and Widgery Do and Widget Smith are all also some really good widget customization
04:37apps.
04:38And it's really just the beginning of apps like this that are made just to do sweet widgets
04:43on the iPhone.
04:44So I keep saying sometimes jokingly, but that stuff has been available on Android for years
04:47that you're just getting on the iPhone.
04:49This is a real one where there's like this entire ecosystem now of apps that are just
04:54for the widget and you download it and there's really no functional app behind it other than
04:59widget customization.
05:00So they each have their own UI and their way for customizing widgets to show information
05:04at a glance, whether it's health information from your Apple Watch or news tickers or stocks
05:10or weather or the date and time or battery or calendar events or really whatever you
05:15want.
05:16But now you can really go crazy customizing exactly what you want in a widget, how you
05:20want it to look, what colors and gradients you want it to use.
05:24It's a whole new horizon.
05:25And I'll leave all these that I'm talking about linked below.
05:28And of course, if you guys find good ones and leave them in the comments, there's a
05:31lot of new ones popping up.
05:32So I'll update that and leave those below as well.
05:34But also something to keep in mind, a lot of these are like free at their very basic
05:39level of customization.
05:41But then as soon as you want to like change a certain color or add a certain function
05:45in the widget, then it becomes paid.
05:47Sometimes a subscription, sometimes like a one time $4 charge or something.
05:51Definitely something to keep in mind.
05:52So if you're getting into level two, you're really starting to customize stuff.
05:56There's going to be a lot of apps like that.
05:58That's the way iPhone apps have been for a while.
06:00But just something to note.
06:01But there you have level two.
06:02Gets a little more personalized and a little more complex, but way more functional, way
06:07more worth it.
06:08So then last but not least, the level three home screen.
06:12The crazy ones you've seen with customized icons and color themes, the whole deal.
06:18So here's the thing.
06:19You can't really actually do custom icons yet on the iOS home screen.
06:25I know it looks like you can.
06:26We've seen a lot of cool things that look like that.
06:29But these are actually Siri shortcuts.
06:32So to make one of these, you need the Siri shortcuts app.
06:34So if you open up shortcuts, you hit that plus, you go to add a new action and you make
06:38it an open app action.
06:41Then you choose the app you want it to open.
06:43I'll make this one open the camera app, for example.
06:45And then you hit the three dots up here in the top and hit add to home screen.
06:50So now you're making what appears on the home screen and you're making your icon.
06:53So you can change the name of your icon, name it whatever you want.
06:57And then you can pick an icon from your photos or your files.
07:00Pro tip, you can actually leave this name field blank for a cleaner look on your home
07:04screen.
07:05Again, something I've been doing with Android launchers for years, any chance I can get
07:09looks super clean.
07:10But yeah, once everything's all set, add it and you should find your new shortcut on the
07:16home screen.
07:17Now here's the downside.
07:18Because these are still a workaround, these are still Siri shortcuts.
07:21Every time you open one of these, it has to open the Siri shortcuts app and then use
07:26that shortcut into the app you want to open.
07:30And it does that every single time and that's kind of annoying.
07:34It takes maybe a quarter of a second, maybe half a second.
07:37But it never gets faster over time.
07:40Every time you open one of these apps with a custom icon, you'll always have to wait
07:42for that little shortcut to run.
07:45And you also don't get any of those little red badges for apps with notifications.
07:48So if you change the messaging one to a Siri shortcut, no badge there.
07:52So it's probably not ideal to have a whole home screen full of these.
07:55But nevertheless, that's what people are doing.
07:57I've seen a lot of color coded home screens on Twitter, which are really impressive looking.
08:01But we obviously now know there's a lot going on with Siri shortcuts happening there.
08:05But at least now there are some pretty sweet icon packs floating around that have a bunch
08:09of icons of the same style or theme.
08:11I'll link this one.
08:13So at least you don't have to go Googling every single icon you want to change.
08:17You can also use a photo you've taken for an icon if you want to just do one or two.
08:20So that's pretty sweet.
08:21I'll link this icon pack and some other cool ones below for some stylized themed home screens
08:29full of Siri shortcuts.
08:30But there you have it.
08:31iOS 14 customization on the home screen in three different levels possible right now.
08:37It's not much.
08:38If you've seen more than this before, you'll realize.
08:40But it's much more than you've ever had in the last 13 versions of iOS.
08:44So I'm counting that as a win.
08:46If you want a full video of all the other best features of iOS 14, including the double
08:51tap on the back to open Google Assistant, all that other fun stuff, of course, I'll
08:55link that video again below.
08:57And if you haven't subscribed already, you probably should.
09:00There's a lot of good stuff coming up, including, of course, the new iPhones when they come
09:03up, which is like right around the corner.
09:05So definitely stay tuned for that.
09:07Either way, that's been it.
09:09Thanks for watching.
09:10Catch you guys in the next one.
09:12Peace.