It was an annoyance of sorts.Īpple, it seems, is addressing the Shortcuts issue. However, one of users’ biggest complaints with their custom icons is that, when tapped, the Shortcuts app would briefly open to run the process that then opens the app in question. This allowed you to create icons that matched your home screen aesthetic, which now consisted of a wallpaper, custom widgets and only the handful of icons that earned home screen (instead of App Library) placement. Simply put, the process let you assign your own icon to any app using a particular function within Shortcuts. This somewhat cumbersome process was detailed and demonstrated by users on TikTok, which helped make the home screen customization craze go viral. The next step in the customization process relied on a previously available but little used trick: Creating alternative app icons using Apple’s Shortcuts app. Users could even choose a particular photo to pin to their home screen using these tools.
Widget makers - like Widgetsmith and Color Widgets, for example - launched tools that let users design their own widgets, by picking the font, the size, the color and more. How to make the most of iOS 14 widgets and iPhone home screen customization
