iOS 18: Arrange Icons Around Your iPhone Wallpaper

[MacRumors]

With iOS 18, Apple overhauled the Home Screen, introducing design changes that allow for more customization and personalization. One of the changes is the freedom to arrange icons and widgets with space between them, opening up a variety of new layout options.

In iOS 17, new apps added to the Home Screen automatically occupy the next available spot, and there is no way to space out icons on the same page. But with iOS 18, you have more flexibility in arranging your Home Screen.

You can now choose the exact location for new apps, allowing for app icon-sized gaps between apps, entire empty rows, or entire empty columns. However, due to the invisible grid system, icons and widgets cannot be placed with uneven spacing, so this should be considered when arranging your Home Screen.

This design enables a variety of layouts: For example, you can place a single app in the center of a page, create a row of apps at the top and bottom, form a column of apps, and more. Apple's goal here is to let you organize apps and widgets around wallpapers and create more functional and visually appealing layouts.

Here's how to place your icons where you want in iOS 18.

1. Long press an empty space on the Home Screen to enter jiggle mode.
2. Move your app icons into the desired positions within the invisible grid.
3. Tap Done.

In iOS 18, you can also make your icons bigger by removing the app names from them. Click the link to learn how it's done. iOS 18 is currently in public beta and will see a general release in the fall.

Article Link: iOS 18: Arrange Icons Around Your iPhone Wallpaper

 

[iMac The Knife]

Wow, it's 2024 and you now have the freedom to arrange icons and widgets with space between them. Brilliant.

 

[coffeemilktea]

I've been planning to remove all the icons so I can see my cat wallpaper with zero distractions. 😻

 

[klky]

It's insane that it's taken this long. Who did they hire that finally figured out this wizardry?

 

[nt5672]

The code has been there for years, they just did not enable it because they knew 2024 would be the right time (also they've got nothing else).

 

[tomtad]

I still don't understand why widgets can't be placed anywhere

 

[BanjoDudeAhoy]

This is the only feature I’ve read about in the new iOS that I find even mildly interesting 😆

 

[klky]

I'm praying there's a way to disable or at least hide the stupid App Library page at the end. I hated it from day one and it's an absolute eye sore. Also it just seems completely unnecessary.

We've been able to arrange apps into folders for some time now. Soon we'll be able to place apps and folders wherever we want on the home screen. If they still force the App Library page at the end of all that, it would actually be hilarious. Basically, "Arrange things however you want, but we're still gonna do it our way and force you to see it".

 

[Dr McKay]

Wow, it's 2024 and you now have the freedom to arrange icons and widgets with space between them. Brilliant.

I wonder if the people I saw saying to others “If you want to have your icons anywhere, buy an android” will make use of this feature 🤔

 

[meady100]

As I have eight pages of legacy tightly stacked icons, is the only way to make space on page 1 actually to tediously pull icons one by one over eight pages or am I missing something? Seems like it could do with a pasteboard of some kind?

 

[gleepskip]

I won't use it. I want as few pages of apps as possible. Adding whitespace around them will only lead to needing more pages of apps, unless I stash some in the App Library.

 

[ghostface147]

I just have my main page with my weather widget, most used apps and two folders called Apple and 3rd party. I heavily use search to open apps and keep it all to one page. While it’s nice to have the ability to place icons everywhere, I can’t have more than one page (slight OCD) and cut back on most used apps to fit on one page.

 

[madmin]

I'm going to skip iOS18 and wait for the Dock free iOS19

/probably

 

[Peepo]

As I have eight pages of legacy tightly stacked icons, is the only way to make space on page 1 actually to tediously pull icons one by one over eight pages or am I missing something? Seems like it could do with a pasteboard of some kind?

If I try to move an app which is surrounded by others I would have expected it to leave a hole/space where it was. But it still auto arranges and fills the space with apps by shifting them all like before. I expected different behavior.

 

[Lyrics23]

As I have eight pages of legacy tightly stacked icons, is the only way to make space on page 1 actually to tediously pull icons one by one over eight pages or am I missing something? Seems like it could do with a pasteboard of some kind?

You can rearrange the home screen order or hide certain home screens. Press this while rearranging:

 

[Sogeman]

As I have eight pages of legacy tightly stacked icons, is the only way to make space on page 1 actually to tediously pull icons one by one over eight pages or am I missing something? Seems like it could do with a pasteboard of some kind?

You can remove icons since like 2 years

 

[WhiteHawk]

I’ll probably never use this, I like to make each screen as useful and quick as possible and a don’t want to have to swipe to another screen or two to get to things just so I can see a background better.

 

[AlexESP]

I still don’t like it — I think it’s pure visual customization that results in worse UX. The forced grid system was great because i.e. there was no need to manually rearrange icons after moving one of them, everything always follows a logical order.

 

[rp100]

It takes courage……. to copy a 15-year old Android feature.

 

[cateye]

I still don’t like it — I think it’s pure visual customization that results in worse UX. The forced grid system was great because i.e. there was no need to manually rearrange icons after moving one of them, everything always follows a logical order.

Except that by removing one icon, the others all shift, causing retained memory targets to be lost. It's maddeningly inconsistent and follows no "logic." Arbitrary placement of icons with no forced rearranging gives you what you want, actually: Consistent, motor-memory-based targets.

 

[Kay_Ess]

Finally… I’m right handed and have small hands and a Pro Max. It was pretty frustrating to have all apps lined up from left to right and top to bottom since that’s not where my main thumb is most of the time.

 

[epox999]

Finally realizing that the 2012 windows phones had something interesting and worthwhile UI wise https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-phone-failed-but-design-stood-test-of-time/

 

[Kay_Ess]

Finally realizing that the 2012 windows phones had something interesting and worthwhile UI wise https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-phone-failed-but-design-stood-test-of-time/

Come on dude… I had almost forgotten about the Windows Phones.
Now I want one again

 

[CarAnalogy]

As much as I’m looking forward to finally having this, I can’t help but laugh once again at Apple’s framing of things. I knew they would do this but it’s still funny.

It’s not a very long overdue, basic feature. It’s, “now you can move icons out of the way of your wallpaper! Isn’t that amazing?!”

 

[CarAnalogy]

Come on dude… I had almost forgotten about the Windows Phones.
Now I want one again

Ironic. What really killed Windows Phone was lack of apps (and mismanagement by Microsoft.) And Microsoft crusaded hard against the open web in the early days.

So it’s ironic that what got them was app exclusivity, the exact same thing which continues to this day to keep Windows afloat when no one actually chooses Windows.

If they had truly championed open standards, they might have had a chance. That, and not starting over three times with the basic development platform, requiring what early adopters there were to basically throw out their work and start from scratch more than once.