- Getting Started
- Customizing Your Home Screens
- Setting the Screen's Appearance, Brightness, Lock/Wake, Text, View, and Wallpaper Options
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Customizing Your Home Screens
You see and use the Home screens constantly, so it’s a good idea to customize them to your preferences.
In the background of the Lock screen and every Home screen is the wallpaper image. In the section called “Setting the Wallpaper on the Home and Lock Screens,” you learn how to configure your iPhone’s wallpaper in both locations.
As you know, you access apps on your Home screens by tapping them; the Home screens come configured with icons in default locations. You can change the location of these icons to be more convenient for you. As you install more apps on your iPhone, it’s a good idea to organize your Home screens so that you can quickly get to the apps you use most frequently. You can move icons around the same screen, move icons between the pages of the Home screen, and organize icons within folders. You can even change the icons that appear on the Home screen Dock. You also can delete icons that you no longer need.
Moving Icons Around Your Home Screens
You can move icons around on a Home screen, and you can move icons among screens to change where they are located.
If you aren’t already on one, move to a Home screen.
Swipe to the left or right across the Home screen until the page containing an icon you want to move appears.
Touch (don’t tap because if you do, the app opens instead) and hold on any icon. After a moment, the Quick Actions menu appears.
Tap Rearrange Apps. The icons begin jiggling, which indicates that you can move icons on the Home screens. You also see the Delete icons (x) in the upper-left corner of some icons, which indicates that you can delete both the icon and app (more on this later in this section).
Touch and hold an icon you want to move; it becomes darker to show that you’ve selected it.
Drag the icon to a new location on the current screen; as you move the icon around the page, other icons separate and are reorganized to enable you to place the icon in its new location.
When the icon is in the location you want, lift your finger. The icon is set in that place. (You don’t have to be precise; the icon automatically snaps into the closest position when you lift your finger off the screen.)
Tap and hold on an icon you want to move to a different page.
Drag the icon to the left edge of the screen to move it to a previous page or to the right edge of the screen to move it to a later page. As you reach the edge of the screen, you move to the previous or next page.
Drag the icon to its location on the new Home screen and lift your finger off the icon.
Continue moving icons until you’ve placed them in the locations you want; then tap Done (X models) or press the Touch ID/Home button (non-X models). The icons are locked in their current positions, they stop jiggling, and the Delete icons disappear.
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Creating and Naming Folders to Organize Apps on Your Home Screens
You can place icons into folders and name these folders to keep them organized and to make more icons available on the same page. To create a folder, do the following:
- Move to the Home screen containing icons you want to place in a folder.
- Touch and hold an icon until the Quick Action menu appears.
- Tap Rearrange Apps. The icons start jiggling; the Delete icons (x) appear on most icons.
- Drag one icon on top of another one that you want to be in the new folder together.
- When the first icon is on top of the second and a folder appears, lift your finger. The two icons are placed into the new folder, which is named based on the type of icons you place within it. The folder opens and you see its default name.
- To delete the current name so you can create a completely new name, tap Delete (x); if you want to keep all or part of the current name, skip this step.
- Change the default name for the folder or type a completely new name if you deleted the previous one.
- Tap done.
- Tap outside the folder to close it.
- If you’re done organizing the Home screens, tap Done (X models) or press the Touch ID/Home button (non-X models). The icons are locked into place and stop jiggling.
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Placing Icons in Existing Folders
You can add icons to an existing folder like so:
- Move to the Home screen containing an icon you want to place in a folder.
- Touch and hold an icon until the Quick Action menu appears. (It doesn’t matter which icon you tap and hold because this starts the screen edit mode and you can get to all the icons once you are in this mode.)
- Tap Rearrange Apps. The icons start jiggling; Delete icons (x) appear on most apps.
- Drag the icon you want to place into a folder on top of the folder’s icon; the folder opens. (The icon doesn’t have to be on the same Home screen page; you can drag an icon from one page and drop it on a folder on a different page.)
- When the folder opens, lift your finger from the screen. The icon is placed within the folder.
- Drag the new icon to its location within the folder.
- Tap outside the folder. The folder closes.
- When you’re done adding icons to folders, tap Done (X models) or press the Touch ID/Home button (non-X models).
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Configuring the Home Screen Dock
The Dock on the bottom of the Home screen appears on every page, making accessing those icons quick and easy. You can place any icons on the Dock that you want, including folder icons.
- Move to the Home screen containing an icon you want to place on the Dock.
- Touch and hold an icon until the Quick Action menu appears.
- Tap Rearrange Apps. The icons start jiggling; the Delete icons (x) appear on most apps.
- Drag an icon that is currently on the Dock from the Dock onto the Home screen to create an empty space on the Dock.
- Drag an icon or folder from the Home screen onto the Dock.
- Drag the icons on the Dock around so they’re in the order you want them to be.
- If you’re done organizing the Home screen, tap Done (X models) or press the Touch ID/Home button (non-X models). The icons are locked into place and stop jiggling.
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Deleting Icons
You can delete most icons from a Home screen to remove them from your iPhone (there are exceptions as explained in “More on Organizing Home Screens”). When you delete an app’s icon, its data is also deleted and you won’t be able to use the app anymore. (Of course, you can download it again if you change your mind, but the data that the app was using is lost unless it’s stored elsewhere.)
- Move to the Home screen containing an icon you want to delete.
- Put the screen in Rearrange mode by touching and holding on an icon and then tapping Rearrange Apps (not shown in the figures).
- Tap Delete (x) on the app that you want to remove from your phone.
- Tap Delete. The app and any associated data on your iPhone are deleted.
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