Customization on iOS has come a lengthy means. There was a time the place user-selectable app icons had been unthinkable: Now, you can also make your apps look nonetheless you need them to. The identical goes in your Lock Display screen: For many of iPhone historical past, you may solely select the wallpaper, however since iOS 16, we have been in a position to completely personalize this expertise as nicely. (Apple: Please allow us to change the flashlight and digital camera shortcuts.)
Though the strains between Android and iOS customization have been progressively blurring for years, Google nonetheless has Apple beat in a single key space: app placement. See, for all of Apple’s newfound customization choices, they’ve remained devoted to their grid system. Apps all the time snap to the top-left nook of a web page, and work throughout from there. You get 4 apps to a row, and when a brand new row begins, the following app seems within the first area on the left aspect of the show. Even when the corporate launched widgets, this grid system retains them locked in. In case you place a widget on a clean House Display screen, it’s going to snap to the highest.
Android, alternatively, doesn’t restrict you want this: You may put your app icons anyplace on the display screen you need. As telephones have gotten bigger, it is made sense to put apps on the underside row of the display screen, slightly than the highest, to make it simple to achieve them with one hand. Positive, Apple is joyful to allow you to place your most-used apps on the underside rows in your iPhone, simply so long as there are apps or widgets above them always.
The factor about this grid system is that it is good for individuals who do not wish to customise their House Screens. You do not have to fret about apps being misplaced, as a result of iOS will all the time put them the place they’re imagined to be. However for anybody who desires a modicum of management over how their House Display screen seems, this grid system is a ache within the ass. It forces customers who actually wish to get inventive with their House Screens to do issues like use invisible widgets to create the phantasm of damaging area within the grid.
This may be altering with iOS 18
If MacRumors and Bloomberg are appropriate, the inflexible grid system may lastly be coming to an finish. Sources for each publications declare Apple’s iOS 18 will introduce extra House Display screen customization, together with the flexibility to extra freely place app icons on the web page. In true Apple type, this may not be as free rein as it’s on Android: It is suspected Apple will introduce invisible blocks to permit customers to push apps wherever they’d wish to, whereas nonetheless respecting the built-in grid system. These blocks would act like widgets, simply not seen: The place apps would usually snap to the highest of the display screen, this block would allow you to push them to different elements of the show. You would place a few these blocks on the prime of the display screen, in order that you may have one or two rows of apps on the backside of the display screen, or cleverly place blocks to then place apps sporadically all through your House Display screen, if that is your factor.
Primarily, Apple is engaged on their very own model of the invisible widget, and whereas it would be good to have a grid-less system, I, for one, welcome this potential change to iOS. Whereas I take pleasure in lots of the changes Apple has made to House Screens customization in lately years, finally, the one change I’ve all the time wished is the flexibility to place my app icons wherever I need them. Let’s hope this one pans out.
Whereas there are not any definitives but, if Apple had been to incorporate this selection with iOS 18, you may count on the corporate to announce throughout its WWDC presentation. Apple hasn’t confirmed a date but, however WWDC 2024 will nearly actually occur in June, adopted shortly thereafter by iOS 18 developer beta, for many who wish to attempt the brand new options early. Apple will drop iOS 18 within the fall, nearly assuredly in September. (The final time Apple launched a significant iOS replace in a distinct month was iOS 5 in October of 2011.)
