Changing App Icons on Your iPhone

As popular as iPhones are, there is one issue that many iPhone users have complained about: the lack of customization options. While Android users have all sorts of options for phone customization, Apple tends to try to keep people from going too far outside the lines.

That is why it is exciting to find out that there is a new feature for customization coming with the iOS 14 update. Once you have the update, you will be able to change the icons that show up for the apps on your phone.

While many of the other new features of iOS 14 have gotten a lot of press, this one has flown under the radar a little. Most people don’t know they can customize the icons on the iPhone. Not only that, they wouldn’t know how to make the changes even if they realize they can.

Read on if you want to learn how to change the icons on your iPhone.

Changing Icons

The first thing you need to know is that you can’t actually change the icons for apps. With this new feature, you can create custom shortcuts that look like icons for the apps. It will have the same visual result as a new icon, but technically, it is a shortcut.

The following are the steps you need to follow to change the icons on your phone:

1. Start by opening the Shortcuts app on your phone.
2. Tap the plus button at the top-right corner of the screen.
3. Tap on the search bar and type, “open app”. Click on Open App when you see it under the Actions heading.
4. Tap Choose and then select the app you want to create a new icon for.
5. Select the More button toward the top-right corner of the phone’s screen.
6. Select Add to Home Screen.
7. Tap New Shortcut.
8. Give the shortcut a name and then tap on the icon next to the name.
9. From there, a menu will come up with options for Take Photo, Choose Photo and Choose File. Select the option you want to use for creating a new app icon.
10. After you have selected the photo or file for the new icon, tap Add. The new icon should appear on the home screen.
11. Since you are creating a shortcut, the app with the original icon will still appear on the home screen. To reduce clutter, you might need to remove the app from the home screen while keeping the new shortcut you just created.

Creating a new app icon is that easy. However, you might be wondering where to get new icons to use. Of course, you can take photos on your phone or use different image files that are on the phone, but you might want something that looks like a real icon.

Where to Get New Icons

Beyond taking pictures, you can create new icons by downloading images that you like to your phone. If you are looking for something that looks a little more like a cool app icon, then there are sites that offer things like icon packs that you can use.

For some cool icon packs, iPhone users can check out a site like EpicPXLS. Typically, this is a site that an app developer or digital strategy agency would use to find things like fonts, graphics, and UI kits. However, the average phone user can download some of the art and icon packs to use on their phones.

One example is this set of Pokemon icons for iOS. It is a full set of icons for all of the most common iOS apps in a Pokemon theme. The creator even added a few Pokemon wallpapers to go with the icons. The icons and wallpapers are free at the time of writing, and you can use them to create your own Pokemon-themed home screen.

To use an icon pack from EpicPXLS or any other site, you would need to download the ZIP file to your phone. You would then need to go to the files app to uncompress the contents of the file. Once you have extracted the files, follow the process for creating an icon from the previous section. When you get to step nine, you would select Choose File from the menu and select the image file for the icon you want to use.

You can find a ton of great icons for customizing your phone if you know where to look. Just browsing the EpicPXLS site, you can find a nice range of icons, and they have options for free and premium icon packs.Written by: Juno Yates