iOS 18: Home Screen Customization and New Features

iOS 18 introduces customizable home screen, lockable/hideable apps, redesigned Control Center, AI features, and app updates.

### iOS 18: Revamped Home Screen, Control Center, Apple Intelligence Features, and More
* 🏠  iOS 18 introduces a completely revamped home screen where users can **freely drag app icons around**, **customize the look of icons**, and **lock or hide apps**.
* 🎨  Users can customize the display in ways never possible before, such as creating an **all-dark icons view** or **changing the look of every app on the iPhone**.
* 🔒  For the first time, users can **lock apps and require Face ID**, as well as **completely hide apps in a secret page** at the bottom of the app library.
* 🪟  Apple has made updates to the home screen, such as the ability to **on-the-fly resize widgets**.
* 🎚️  The entirely new version of Control Center features a **customizable favorites page**, **new controls library**, and the ability to **add controls directly to the favorites page**.
* 🧠  Apple announced several new intelligence features, such as a new UI for Siri, the ability to **know context and personal details while keeping them private**, and better handling of general queries with a **chat GPT integration**.
* 📅  The Calendar app has been updated to include reminders that **communicate with the Calendar app**, and uncompleted reminders show up on the **home screen calendar widget**.
* 📷  The new Photos app has a redesigned homepage, **highlights memories and selected trips**, and uses Apple intelligence to **recognize people and pets in photos**.

okay, it's finally time to go hands-on with iOS 18. Apple just released the first beta, and today I want to show you the completely revamped home screen, the entirely new version of Control Center, a look at Apple's new intelligence features, and so much more that Apple didn't even talk about. So, welcome to iOS 18 in the all-new home screen where for the first time in iPhone history you can freely drag app icons around, and they are no longer locked to the top of your display. You can make designs just like this, a circle on the home screen, for example, and it will stay like that no matter what page you're on or where you go. But if you're like me, something that you've always wanted to do on your iPhone is the ability to change the way that the icons look. Well, in iOS 18, there's a new option to edit and customize your display in a way that you've never been able to before, including a brand new all-dark icons view for Apple's apps. Or if you want to

change the look of every single app on your iPhone. There's a crazy new UI for changing everything, and this applies to all of the apps on your iPhone, which admittedly is really easy to make things look ugly. I am shocked that Apple has introduced the ability to just change the way that every single app looks like you're kind of in a Photoshop for your home screen. But let's say you can't find the exact color that you want. Well, that's why Apple has added this eyedropper feature where you can drag it around your wallpaper. And let's say I want this really specific shade of light pink at the bottom of my screen. Well, when I select that, it is now applied that color palette to my entire app Library. Here to be honest though, my favorite look so far is just the dark mode version of all of Apple's app icons. And speaking of apps, what if there's something on your phone that you don't want other people to know even exists? Well, for the first time in iOS 18, you can lock apps and require

face ID. You tap on that first option right there. It scans your face to confirm that you are the one doing this. So, the next time you go back to Snapchat and you try to open it, it just says that Face ID is required. Now, in iOS 18, in addition to locking apps, you can also completely hide them. When you tap on that second option right there and you scan in your face, it's going to give you a popup of what exactly hiding this app means. First, it's going to blur out the app icon and name, and you will not get any notifications from this app, because then it would tell other people that you have it installed. When you hide it, it's now pushed to a very secret page at the bottom of your app library, at the end of your home screen. When you tap on this, as you would guess, the only way to get in is again with Face ID or passcode, but you cannot see that the apps in there exist. And if you even try to search for them, like I want to find

my Snapchat app. Oh, it's not on my iPhone because it doesn't exist. Until I go to the bottom, I tap on that right there and I scan in my face, and the app's hidden appear. That feature alone may have been the number one request for the iPhone since it has released, and I can't believe it's actually here now. Back on the home screen, Apple's made some other nice updates as well, like the ability to on-the-fly resize widgets. You can drag it there or make it even the largest size like so, and this all happens in real time. You can shrink it back down and get your previous layout back without messing up your entire design. And speaking of design, let me show you the entire new version of Control Center, which Apple has redesigned in a really big way. Starting off with the new favorites page, which now, just like the home screen when you tap and hold, is fully customizable with adjustments to widgets and controls. For example, just like on the widget section, you can make this as big or as small as you want on

the Fly and most exciting is the ability to add controls directly to here. With a new controls Library, pressing and holding on these controls adds the expanded view as well. This is sort of like your main previous control center setup. You can press and hold again to see more details about all of these. Press and hold on the music widget to get an improved music player with a new AirPlay UI. That doesn't really seem to be that much better right now, but most notable probably is the new pages that Apple has added. Like right here is a lot of your default controls. And when you press and hold again, you've got room to drag all of these wherever you want. Again, they're not locked to the top just like your home screen. The next page after that is the dedicated media player. Below that, you've got all of your home controls where they are no longer auto-suggested. They will just all show up here. And finally, on the last page, there's kind of your default controls in case you would somehow get rid of that widget and you need to quickly go into

something like airplane mode or Wi-Fi, and controls have been a big topic as well forever on the lock screen because Apple has had these two toggles here that for whatever reason you just can't change. Well, that is until today, guys, 'cause in iOS 18 when you press and hold, tap on customize, and go to the lock screen, you can remove both of these. Tap on the plus icon and select any controls for your lock screen toggles. Let's say I want voice memos there on the left, and then over on the right, I do a ton of shazaming. Well, now when I hit done and I go back to my lock screen, you've got fully customized options. And keep in mind you can still swipe over to use your camera, so you got all the same functionality as before. Basically, you've just got more customization about what you use your lock screen to quickly access. But if there's one thing about iOS 18 that I think has shocked everyone, it's all of the new Apple intelligence features that Apple announces.

finally showed off their crazy selection of AI features and changes and the new version of Siri, which unfortunately is not included in iOS 18 beta 1. So, while Apple showed off some crazy things like a new UI for Siri, the ability to know context and personal details while keeping all of that locked down private and secure, and the ability to handle general queries better with a chat GPT integration. As of right now, no one can actually test these things on device. We just kind of have to trust Apple when they say that they're coming out in beta later this year. But if you want to see that series as soon as it comes out, make sure you hit that subscribe button 'cause I will be covering it extensively here on Apple track. So let me show you a ton of the other features that Apple has added to apps like the Messages app, in which for the first time you can schedule messages to send later. So, if you want to text somebody but maybe not right now, you can tap to schedule that message with a familiar picker. It will send it.

at that exact time, you can see it even shows up with a new UI. Right there to indicate it's not been sent yet. It's just going to be sent then. And you can edit it in retrospect if you want. You can also be more expressive with the tapback reactions. Now they're color-colored for the first time. And you can also select individual stickers or emojis of your choosing. Anything that you want, including custom stickers that you've made like inside jokes with friends. Can now be reacted like so. Even plain text messages are now going to be more fun with a full-on built-in text editor. You can bold, italic, underline things. And now you can do text effects for just specific words. So I can go to my text editor just for this word in particular. And it will add explode reactions, bloom, jitter. These are all new options in iOS 18 that will make things a bit more expressive when you send it. And it animates in chat like so. Okay, next up, an entirely new app is Apple has.

added a passwords app for all of your iCloud keychain things that were previously hidden in settings. It is basically so much easier to see things from two-factor authentication, your general passwords, your specific pass keys. It's all here rather than buried in the settings act, which has also been a little bit redesigned but not as dramatic as we thought. There's been a light rearranging of where things are with battery now at the very top. General has a massive section telling you exactly what you'll find in here, and it just seems way less convoluted in this main area that used to go on forever. Apple's combined that endless list of apps now into a separate section that you can sort by going up or down here on the side. And while we're in settings, let me show you the new wallpapers that Apple has added. There's not a ton here, but for iOS 18, there are four different styles. We have the standard version, something a bit more yellow and azure, as well as the final purple options. So four.

different options here, but not the most exciting wallpaper. If I had to rate it, I'm shocked that Apple did not mention the major calendar updates that they made. Not only is the UI a little bit different, I think it looks nicer. They have baked in reminders so they communicate with the Calendar app. Now you can complete reminders and view them on your list of daily activities. And if you haven't completed something yet, it'll even show up on your home screen in the calendar widget. But the app with the biggest changes in iOS 18 is the new Photos app. Which this is what it looks like now when you launch it up. It doesn't just throw you entirely into your app grid. You can return to that with the same sorting and Easy View features that they had before, but now there's recent days Apple has Auto-selected, there's people and pets. It's sort of like a homepage for your photos rather than the tab view we had before. Apple highlights things like your memories more prominently, and there's even selected trips that automatically

show up which it's done actually a pretty good job of all these specific trips that I took last year. It knows when you leave home. At the bottom of your screen here you've got a new option for some filters. For example, if you just want to see like edited photos specifically, it'll just show you all of these things that are your specific edited photos. And this is actually one of the apps that Apple has where they can start to show some Apple intelligence things. Like if I want to see pictures of myself and my friend Adam, it will find images from a super long time ago like 2017 of me and my friend Adam in it. Look, there we are right there. That's crazy how it just found that instantly. And those are just the pre-selected options. I can literally go back and type 10 years ago and it will find photos that are literally some of the first on my entire iPhone. Next up, the Notes app got some big updates in iOS 18 like the ability to finally record audio directly into notes. You can

start your recording just like that. And while that alone would be very nice, especially for a student maybe taking lectures. Well, Apple can now transcribe it on device immediately. Right below is the transcript. You tap on that and then the speech icon right here, and you can see exactly what I said in this note. It's now baked in outside of The Voice Memos app. The Notes app can also do math for the first time, even if it's a little bit complex. As soon as you input the equals sign, it'll give you the correct answer to the equation following the standard order of operations. And this is a small one, but the Notes app can finally highlight text to your color of choosing like so, to make things stand out a bit more in your page. But it's not just calculations in the Notes app, it's calculations in the brand new Calculator app, which you can see now has a history of all of your math, so you can type in whatever you want, and it automatically goes in a little bit of a tape right.

here on the left side so you can reference things that you calculated in the past. But it's really down here at the bottom left that the calculator gets super powerful like the scientific section, which can now be used in portrait orientation. But what I'll be using the most is the new convert feature where you can select exactly whether you want to convert things like currency, data, energy, force, fuel. This is all built into these stock calculator apps. You can now do things like centimeters to meters right inside of here, and it does it immediately. Oh, and of course, this all now comes to the iPad with the new version of the calculator app specifically made for iPad OS. Apple also made a quiet but really important change for gaming in iOS 18 because they've added a brand new game mode that they say improves the frame rate performance over the course of hours when you're playing a game because they reduce background activity to a bare minimum. Apple is also bringing spatial audio to gaming with AirPods and iOS 18, and they even say that they

reduced the latency for controllers moving on now to the wallet app. You can't really see any of the changes that Apple made on device yet, but ticketing, for example for concerts, is supposed to be way more rich with Stadium or event details and a better looking ticket experience. You can now tap two iPhones together to exchange an Apple cash payment, which is pretty cool 'cause previously you could only do this by sending text messages. Okay, so those are the biggest changes that I want to show you so far in iOS 18. I just had to show you the new icons and the look and the rearranged control center, which is also insane. It is the biggest iPhone update in ever or a very long time, and I'm so happy with everything that Apple changed. So if you are too, drop a like on this video. It really helps me out, and hit subscribe for more videos on iOS 18 very, very soon. Okay, I've been Sam. I'm going to keep playing around with this. I'll be back with more hidden features very

Shortly, okay. I'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.

iOS 18 HANDS-ON! Major Features Released!

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Apple's iOS 18 introduces a revamped home screen, allowing users to freely arrange app icons and customize their look, including a new dark mode.

The update also brings the ability to lock and hide apps, requiring Face ID for added security and privacy.

Additionally, a secret page in the app library allows hidden apps to be accessed only with Face ID or a passcode, keeping them completely out of sight.

Apple's iOS 18 introduces the long-awaited feature of hiding apps by scanning your face, a top request for iPhone users.

The update also includes the ability to on-the-fly resize widgets on the home screen, and a major redesign of the Control Center, allowing for greater customization and addition of new controls.

Additionally, iOS 18 offers the option to fully customize the lock screen toggles, providing more personalized and convenient access to app controls.

The new version of Siri in iOS 18 will include a new UI, improved contextual understanding, and GPT integration, but is not yet available for testing.

The Messages app in iOS 18 introduces the ability to schedule messages, new tap-back reactions, and a built-in text editor for more expressive messaging.

iOS 18 also brings a new Passwords app for iCloud keychain management, as well as a redesigned Settings app and new wallpaper options.

Apple's iOS 18 brings major changes to the Calendar app, including integrated reminders and a new calendar widget on the home screen.

The Photos app has also been revamped with a homepage for photos, prominent display of memories, and intelligent photo search features.

Additionally, the Notes app now allows users to record audio directly into their notes.

The iOS 18 update allows for on-device transcription in the Voice Memos app, as well as the ability to perform math calculations and highlight text in the Notes app.

The Calculator app now includes a history feature and a variety of conversion options, and has been optimized for the iPad.

Additionally, the update introduces a new game mode to improve frame rate performance and brings spatial audio to gaming with AirPods.

iOS 18 offers reduced latency for controllers and an improved wallet app experience.

The update includes richer ticketing details, the ability to exchange Apple cash payments by tapping two iPhones together, and redesigned icons and control center.

The changes represent the biggest iPhone update in a long time, with the creator expressing satisfaction and encouraging viewers to explore the new features.