Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman said that iOS 18 will bring users more iPhone homescreen customization features. According to the introduction, users will be able to place icons freely instead of being limited to the current “fixed alignment” grid, and can also change the color of all app icons and place them where they want. For example, users can change all social app icons to blue, or change the icons of financial apps to green.
Gurman revealed that several new iOS features are being developed this year, including transcribing voice memos, retouching photos with AI, improving web search in Safari, etc. Specifically, Apple will also introduce new AI features in iOS 18 and macOS 15.
The two operating systems will use a built-in software to determine whether a task should be handled by the client or the cloud. Similar features on Android can be traced back to Android 12 released in 2021, where users can customize the theme colors of some app icons. Subsequently, a new feature was included in Android 13 : forcing apps on the phone to turn on theme icons, even if the app itself does not support it.
