ios14 Home Screen Set up

So incase you did not know Apple released a new update this past week and its a game changer when it comes to personalizing and making your home screen more aesthetic pleasing. You can now personalize your home screen with widgets and also add shortcuts to your most frequently used apps and change up the look of your APP icons. Since showing you guys my new home screen yesterday the questions haven’t stopped so I thought writing a blog post with the steps would be helpful for you all.

Okay now, its a little bit of a process but once you do it a couple times it becomes repetitive and very easy!

Steps to setting up your ios14 widgets

1. Download the ios14 update if you don’t already have it. You can find it under Settings, then General and Software update.
2. Pick a background image that is aesthetic pleasing to you. I found mine on Pinterest. Linked some here & add it as your home screen background.
3. Next step is to declutter your home screen. With the new update you can move your infrequently used apps to a place called “App Library” – this is an additional hidden homescreen with all your apps. All you do is hold over an icon as you would if you were moving it then click “Edit Home Screen” and click on the arrow button again and click “Move to App Library”. Repeat this step until you’ve left only your daily used apps.

4. Download app called “Widgetsmith”

Now here is the hard part, or a little confusing. Widgets are ways to personalize your home screen. Like you can add a calendar icon, a time, a date, a simple photo icon, a to do list icon, a text icon, reminders, weather and more and pick the size between SMALL, MEDIUM or LARGE. If you look at my home screen my widgets are the green calendar on top and the icon that says World of Modern Mom and family photo. Below I’ll add my current home screen so you can see some of the widgets I added.

To edit or add widgets:

Open Widgetsmith app — choose what size widget you want and click on it to edit it. The only ones you will see are black and white. Below I made a video tutorial with notes on how to complete this step on Widgetsmith. Also if you wished you could just add the widgets just the way they come, I just wanted to personalize mine so it would go with my background photo.

5. Edit APP icons

So by now your home screen already are looking a little different and that might be enough for you. But if you want to keep going and even change up the look of your APP ICONS, you can!

First you will need to find icon pictures for every app you want to keep on your home screen and change. There are a couple ways of doing this.

1. Search Pinterest for “icon app covers… light pink or whatever color or specific app” then download image from Pinterest. This could take some time to find them all and in the same color tones.
2. You could also just make them yourself on CANVA if you’re familiar with the website.
3. Easiest option and what I did was found someone on IG that already created them and is providing them for free for us! Here is the profile I got mine from. I just screenshot all the ones I wanted to use.
4. Once you have all the photos of the apps you want to add, you can move on to the next step!

6. Shortcuts

This is another step that might seem difficult but once you see it once, its again very repetitive! So I will do another video on how to edit the APP ICONS on your home screen to the new icon pictures you saved on the step prior.

& THATS IT!! Not too bad right??? Let me know your thoughts and tag me instagram, I would love to see your new home screen!! 

BONUS: 

HELPS WITH SHORTCUT APP DELAY:

1. Go to settings
2. Tap on Accessibility
3. Tap on Motion
4. Tap the “Reduce Motion” button to turn on