Increase Icon Size and Hide App Names

One of the ways you can customise your iOS home screen this year with iOS 18 is to actually remove the name from underneath your app icons and make the icons a little bit larger to fill more of the space. This can create some really interesting effects, especially if you’re using custom tinted icons and different wallpapers. Hiding the name means you get a much more minimal look.

To do this, all you need to do is long-press your home screen, and then, in the top-left corner, press ‘Edit’ and then ‘Customise’. On that screen, at the bottom, you can then choose between small and large app icons. When you toggle across to large, your home screen will change just like this, and you’ll notice that the names of the app icons also disappear. That’s quite good if you’re making an aesthetic wallpaper set where you don’t want the labels of each app underneath them.

Of course, I can then toggle back between small and large, and you’ll see those icons change size in real-time. Even the widgets will change slightly – they’ll lose the name underneath, get slightly bigger, and just like you’d expect, you can use this on light mode icons, dark mode icons, or colour-tinted icons. They’ll all work in the exact same way. But be aware, the large icons won’t appear elsewhere in iOS – that means they won’t be in Spotlight, and notifications won’t look different. It’s just for the home screen itself.

There are loads of other things you can customise in iOS 18 that I bet you don’t know about yet. Please do check out my channel down below, or if you want to learn more, I’ve written an ebook – 100 Quick Tips for iOS 18 – which you can find at the link below.