How to Change the Home Screen on iPhone

Your iPhone's home screen is the first thing you see every time you unlock your device — and Apple has made it more customizable than ever. Whether you want to rearrange apps, change your wallpaper, add widgets, or completely restyle the look of your phone, iOS gives you several tools to work with. The exact options available to you depend on which iPhone model you have and which version of iOS it's running.

What "Changing the Home Screen" Actually Covers

The phrase means different things to different people. For some, it's as simple as swapping a wallpaper. For others, it means reorganizing apps into folders, hiding entire pages, or using custom app icons to create a cohesive aesthetic. iOS bundles several distinct features under the umbrella of home screen customization:

• Wallpaper — the background image on your home screen and lock screen
• App arrangement — where icons sit and how they're grouped
• Widgets — live information panels that sit alongside your apps
• App Library — a hidden-but-organized view of all your apps
• Focus Modes — the ability to show different home screen layouts depending on context
• Custom app icons — replacing default icons using the Shortcuts app

Understanding which of these you want to change helps narrow down exactly where to go in your settings.

How to Change Your Wallpaper

The most straightforward home screen change is the wallpaper. To update it:

1. Open Settings
2. Tap Wallpaper
3. Tap Add New Wallpaper
4. Choose from Apple's built-in options — including Photos, Live Photos, Emoji, Weather, and Astronomy wallpapers — or select an image from your own camera roll

From iOS 16 onward, wallpapers are paired with the lock screen, and you can set different wallpapers for the lock screen and home screen independently. You can also create multiple wallpaper/lock screen pairs and switch between them manually or automatically via Focus Modes.

Rearranging and Organizing Apps

To move apps around, press and hold any app icon until the icons begin to jiggle. In this edit mode you can:

• Drag apps to a new position on the same page
• Drag apps to the edge of the screen to move them to another page
• Create folders by dragging one app on top of another
• Drag apps to the Dock at the bottom (which holds up to four items)

To remove an app from the home screen without deleting it, tap the small minus (–) button that appears on the icon during jiggle mode and select Remove from Home Screen. The app moves to the App Library and stays installed on your device.

Hiding and Managing Home Screen Pages 🗂️

iOS lets you hide entire pages of your home screen without deleting anything. While in jiggle mode, tap the row of dots at the bottom of the screen (the page indicator). This opens a page manager where you can uncheck pages to hide them. Hidden pages remain accessible through the App Library, which is always one swipe to the right of your last visible home screen page.

This feature is useful for people who want a cleaner, more minimal layout without actually removing apps from their device.

Adding and Customizing Widgets

Widgets display live information — weather, calendar events, battery levels, news headlines — directly on your home screen. To add one:

1. Enter jiggle mode by long-pressing any app
2. Tap the + button in the top-left corner
3. Browse or search for a widget
4. Select a size (small, medium, or large)
5. Tap Add Widget, then drag it into position

Smart Stacks are a specific widget type that automatically rotates through multiple widgets based on time of day and your usage habits. You can also build a custom stack by dragging widgets on top of each other.

Widget availability depends on whether the relevant app supports them. Third-party apps increasingly offer widget support, but not universally.

Using Focus Modes to Switch Between Layouts

Focus Modes (introduced in iOS 15) let you associate specific home screen pages and wallpapers with different contexts — Work, Personal, Sleep, Do Not Disturb, and custom modes you create. When a Focus is active, only the designated home screen pages are visible.

To configure this:

1. Go to Settings → Focus
2. Select or create a Focus
3. Tap Customize Screens under the Home Screen section
4. Choose which pages appear when that Focus is active

This makes Focus Modes one of the more powerful — and underused — home screen tools available on iPhone.

Custom App Icons via Shortcuts ✏️

If you want to change the visual appearance of app icons themselves, you can do this using the Shortcuts app. The process involves creating a shortcut that opens a specific app, then assigning any image from your photo library as its icon. The result appears on your home screen like a regular app.

The trade-off is that tapping a custom icon opens the Shortcuts app briefly before launching the target app — a small but noticeable delay. This approach is popular for aesthetic customization, especially paired with third-party icon packs, but it's not a seamless native feature.

What Varies by iOS Version and Device

Older iPhones running earlier versions of iOS won't have access to all of these features. If a setting described here doesn't appear on your device, the iOS version is the most likely reason. 📱

The Variables That Shape Your Setup

How far you take home screen customization depends on factors specific to you: how organized you want your apps to be, whether aesthetics matter to you, how many apps you actively use, and whether you switch between different contexts during the day. Someone who uses their iPhone for one or two main purposes has very different needs from someone juggling work, personal, and fitness routines across the same device. The tools are flexible enough to support minimalist layouts, highly curated aesthetic setups, and everything in between — but which combination actually makes sense depends entirely on how your particular iPhone fits into your daily life.