iOS 18: Make Your iPhone Home Screen Icons Dark

[JulianL]

To maximise battery life I've run my iPhone in dark mode ever since my first iPhone OLED screen and personally I like the dark mode icon setting to take me one step further (I'm not saying it's giving me any more battery saving but it just completes the dark aesthetic for me).

The problem I see though for people who are very fussy about aesthetics is that, unless you only use Apple apps, we are at the mercy of third party developers at least in these early days. I just tried the dark icons option and my home screen looks great in dark mode - except for the Microsoft OneNote icon that ruins the whole thing and is making me prefer to stick with light icons for now.

I think this is going to be one of those settings that I play with for 5 minutes every few months and if all my apps have released acceptable dark icons, or at least all those that I have at the top level on my home page as opposed to within folders, I will go dark permanently but until then it isn't an option I'm going to use yet.

 

[Oblivious.Robot]

I tried it, did not like the look and immediately went back to normal icons. But yes for more choices.

 

[JulianL]

Who cares about icons whatever…… Can apple please fix it so i can have dark mode in ANY app? Browsing at night in bed is a nightmare when suddenly a web page is bright white when it should be dark. Accessibility and Invert is a kind of fix but can they just bake this into a auto mode that inverts but doesnt invert pictures? Low light mode sucks as contrast is too low.

I agree about dark mode in any app but perversely I also have the exact opposite complaint about not dark mode in some apps, one in particular for me.

I've run my iPhones in dark mode ever since I got my first OLED screen and really like the aesthetic except that for some reason, maybe because I grew up in the days of paper maps, I just cannot really get my brain to quickly interpret a map in dark mode. I'd love to give Apple Maps more of a chance on my iPhone and Apple Watch but because it always follows the system setting it is always in dark mode so I stick with Google Maps that does allow me to set it to light mode even though my iPhone is set globally to dark.

I really think that any well-designed app should always offer 3 settings for its light/dark mode - "(Always) Dark", "(Always) Light" and "Follow system setting".

 

[raylo32]

Funny, this is the same thing with my Toyota truck. During daytime I'd like the screen to be in dark mode for the radio and menus but not for the maps. Unfortunately this is not possible.

I agree about dark mode in any app but perversely I also have the exact opposite complaint about not dark mode in some apps, one in particular for me.

I've run my iPhones in dark mode ever since I got my first OLED screen and really like the aesthetic except that for some reason, maybe because I grew up in the days of paper maps, I just cannot really get my brain to quickly interpret a map in dark mode. I'd love to give Apple Maps more of a chance on my iPhone and Apple Watch but because it always follows the system setting it is always in dark mode so I stick with Google Maps that does allow me to set it to light mode even though my iPhone is set globally to dark.

I really think that any well-designed app should always offer 3 settings for its light/dark mode - "(Always) Dark", "(Always) Light" and "Follow system setting".

 

[lindros2]

I installed iOS 18.0 on my iPad M4.
Now the whole screen is black (dark).

 

[Da_Shiznit]

But yes for more choices.

Agreed.

a map in dark mode.

Sucks. Maps should always be light.

I really think that any well-designed app should always offer 3 settings for its light/dark mode - "(Always) Dark", "(Always) Light" and "Follow system setting".

Agreed! I would love to see Apple give the option per app. I prefer the dark look on things like the mini player, but most apps I prefer in light mode.

I live in the permanent auto-mode. When sunlight hits the screen things become unreadable for me when things are in dark mode.

 

[Arytonsenna]

This is stupid. They should just go back to having icons that can be transparent/any shape. Making everything a rounded square was a dumb decision at the time it was made, no doubt by some clueless UX designer

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I like the overall look of the icons now. I went with the Mars wallpaper and tinted the icons orange on my iPhone. 😎

 

[hagjohn]

Yeah, no thank you. I'm not a fan of the look. I will use the normal icons.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

Yeah, no thank you. I'm not a fan of the look. I will use the normal icons.

Options like this are good to have. I didn't think I'd be interested in icon tinting but here I am using it now. Needs a bit of refinement and light mode needs a tinting option, but it's a good first step and it's optional. There's a trend around of people using icon shortcuts to achieve icon tinting and now that's easier for them.

 

[GlennFisher]

In iOS 18, iPhone apps have both Light and Dark color options, making it possible to match the color of your icons when you have Dark mode enabled. Keep reading to learn how it works.

Apple's built-in apps have both Light and Dark color options in iOS 18, and now that the update is available to the public, third-party apps are in the process of providing their own Light and Dark icon alternatives to match your preferred aesthetic, but until then your iPhone will happily generate dark versions of them, too.

The Dark icons are all redesigned with a black background rather than a white or colored background, which makes them blend in better with the ‌Dark Mode‌ setting. In addition, it's possible to turn on Dark icons independently of having ‌Dark Mode‌ enabled, so you can leave Light mode on while using the Dark icon option if you prefer.

To go along with the ‌Dark Mode‌ icons, Apple also introduced a toggle that makes your wallpaper darker. The following steps explain how to switch your icon colors to match Light or Dark mode.

1. Press and hold a space on the Home Screen or an app page to enter jiggle mode.
   
2. Tap Edit in the top-left corner.
   
3. Select Customize in the dropdown menu.
   
4. Choose Dark, Light, or Automatic in the customization panel. (Automatic will lighten or darken the icons depending on whether Light or Dark mode is enabled.)
5. Tap anywhere outside the customization panel to close it and exit jiggle mode.

Note that the customization panel has other new settings including one to darken your wallpaper (the sun icon), an option to make icons bigger (without labels) or smaller, and a Tint option that will put a tint over all of your icons – you can even match the tint with a color from your wallpaper using the eyedropper icon.

Article Link: iOS 18: Make Your iPhone Home Screen Icons Dark

i've been on DEV IOS 18 Since June and my INSTAGRAM APP will NOT change to dark mode. LIKE HOW IS THIS EVEN A THING?? LOL Any input would be great! thanks peeps

 

[GlennFisher]

It's a B E T A

my IG icon will not ever change to dark mode. been light since June on DEV IOS 18

 

[Grayburn]

my IG icon will not ever change to dark mode. been light since June on DEV IOS 18

Strange, my Insta icon changes, i take it everything is updated?

 

[pinkkie]

To maximise battery life I've run my iPhone in dark mode ever since my first iPhone OLED screen

how much battery do you save per day? have you measured it?

 

[someshwaradas]

As a beta user, this has actually been incredibly annoying as now the dark semi-transparent backgrounds for modals and popups and notifications is ONLY available if you have dark icons enabled. Otherwise, it is a white semi-transparent background. If you want the pre-iOS 18 experience of light icons and a dark modal, that is no longer available with the new system

Well, you can partially control it by changing the background darkness using the sun icon in the upper left of the customize dialog. When you select light icons, it changes that to light, and dark to dark. You can set it independently once you've selected the light/dark icon setting. It's not perfect, but it helps.

 

[DunedinD]

“In addition, it's possible to turn on Dark icons independently of having ‌‌Dark Mode‌‌ enabled, so you can leave Light mode on while using the Dark icon option if you prefer.”

I’m finding something like the reverse useful. Light mode but darkened wallpaper and light icons. The icons really pop then and you still get the vibe of whatever colourful background you’ve chosen without it being an overpowering distraction.

 

[mistymac]

As a beta user, this has actually been incredibly annoying as now the dark semi-transparent backgrounds for modals and popups and notifications is ONLY available if you have dark icons enabled. Otherwise, it is a white semi-transparent background. If you want the pre-iOS 18 experience of light icons and a dark modal, that is no longer available with the new system

I have a similar bug to pick with all this.

I like to use the weather wallpaper on my lock and home screen. During the day the dark icons stick out a little too much against the bright blue backgrounds. There is no option to have the icons go from light to dark with the day time, only a dark or light mode toggle.

Like you mentioned though, having dark mode enabled makes all the little icons dark in the notifications even if you have light icons enabled. So now I can't really have a fully unified theming if I want to use dark mode without dark icons. I like the look of the dark icons, and they look great against the nighttime weather wallpaper so I would love it if they could change at sunset/sunrise.

 

[canisreevus]

My Apple Classical app icon won’t change to dark. Anyone else?

 

[svish]

Good article. Happy that more customization is now possible on iOS 18

 

[macjaffa]

For web pages, there are Safari extensions like Noir.

I tried a few of these app and noir although most expensive at 3.99 is WELL WORTH it highly recommend. But still not a solution for system wide apps but great for safari browsing. Brilliant

 

[JulianL]

how much battery do you save per day? have you measured it?

No. It's a fair question but I never felt any need to spend time trying to answer the question since it's not a case of seeing if it's a trade-off that's worth it because for me there is no trade-off, I now prefer the aesthetics of dark mode anyway. I only used light mode in pre-OLED because I never thought to change it and the though of switching back to light mode for a few days just to do the experiment doesn't seem very enticing to me.

Also, I suspect my results would be quite non-typical because a very large amount of the screen-on time for my phone is reading ebooks on Kindle and with that in dark mode I'm spending hours a day looking at a screen where probably at least 90% of the pixels (the background page) are totally powered down at any time vs running Kindle in light mode where at least 90% of the pixels are switched on to render the white/sepia/whatever background page so I would expect quite a big power saving in terms of how many minutes of reading I get per 10% charge in dark vs light mode. Also the Kindle app is making almost no demands on the CPU while reading, it pretty much only needs to do any processing when I turn a page, which again makes the power draw of the screen a particularly significant contributor to power efficiency in an app like Kindle vs say a first person shooter game.