How to change the tint and app color in iOS 18

Apple’s latest and greatest iOS operation system won’t be with us properly for another six weeks or so, but there is a chance you have jumped on board the Public beta in order to test out a couple of its cool new features.,

Being a beta however means there will be issues and maybe not everything is as well signposted as it may be when we get the final version. So if you have been trawling online to see a couple of the best new bits of iOS 18 and can’t quite work out how to get it to work on your iPhone, you are in the right place

How to change app tint

One of the best customization options to come to iOS in a long time is the ability to tint or recolor all the garish app icons that make your home screen a place of chaos. First, we got Dark Mode to tone down the glare – now we are getting the option to mellow out all those colorful icons devs create in order to grab your attention every time you open your phone. We say no to devs with stupid bright icons.

iOS 18’s app tint feature is great, but not perfect and it definitely works better with some icons and widgets than others – needless to say at the beta stage, all of Apple’s icons look great but some third-party ones can go a bit weird. As a rule, though the whole thing still looks better than it did, and you can even change the size of the icons from the same settings and make them larger. Why would you do that you say? Well, it removes the text from under each icon and makes it a lot tidier, although the problem I had was I could not remember the icons for many of my obscure apps so I turned it off again. It would be better if you could set it at a page level so say your main home page was glorious icons, but ones in folders on later pages still had the app name under it. But you can’t, so I digress.

Tip: It’s worth pointing out that at the time of writing (iOS 17 Public beta 2) on my iPhone 15 Pro Max there is a noticeable lag of a couple of seconds between choosing a tiny color and it being applied to your screen. This was confusing at first as I was sliding it all over the show and nothing was happening and then the phone just freaked out. So move something and don’t touch anything else for a few seconds.

To get to the tint menu you need to do the following:

• Unlock your iPhone
• Press and hold anywhere on the screen – on an appl or empty spot until your apps start to jiggle
• Press the new Edit option at the top left of the screen
• Choose Customize

This will bring up options to color your apps using Light or Dark Mode. We are looking for the last option here – Tinted.

Select that and move the sliders to the color you want, be patient and wait until they update. If you like it you can just accept the change or continue until it looks better.

Selecting the Small / Large option will change the icon size as above.

There is also a color picker (dropper) icon which you can select so you can “pick up” the iOS tint you require from elsewhere on your screen.

It’s as easy as that and hopefully, future updates will eradicate the lag between making changes.

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