Apple’s next iPhone operating system is slowly becoming clearer: The manufacturer is reportedly making the central home screen more flexible and customizable than before. For the first time, users will be able to place app icons more freely according to their own ideas. Apple doesn’t plan to do that yet. Accordingly, up to iOS 17 it is not easy to leave an empty line between rows of apps on the home screen or to set up a home screen page without any app icons.
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Huge update iOS 18?
Something like this can currently only be achieved using complicated workarounds, for example by using Apple’s shortcuts app to create shortcuts whose icons have the same color as the wallpaper you have set up. This means they are practically invisible, at least until you change the background.
Apple wrote that iOS 18 is still considered one of the biggest operating system updates ever Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman over the weekend. The main focus is on AI functions that are intended to simplify everyday use. Concrete details have hardly emerged yet – apart from a new home screen.
It is clear that Apple will have to make further changes in iOS 18 in view of the new EU rules, among other things, including the option to delete standard apps such as Safari and set up another navigation or map app as the default. According to Apple, the latter will last until the beginning of 2025. In addition, the iPhone should support the SMS successor RCS by the end of the year.
iOS is becoming more and more customizable
Apple has gradually made iOS more and more customizable in recent years, after the company had long resisted flexibility. Only numerous, extremely popular jailbreak tweaks and the customizability of Android ultimately seemed to have led Apple to rethink: iOS 14 opened the home screen for widgets, and since iOS 16 the lock screen can also be customized. Focus modes also enable you to switch between home and lock screens on the fly. Apple is expected to present iOS 18 at the WWDC developer conference in early June and publish an initial beta. The update is usually released to the general public in September.
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