5. Customizing How Your iPhone Looks and Sounds
In this chapter, you learn how to make an iPhone look and sound the way you want it to. Topics include the following:
Setting the screen’s brightness, lock/wake, text, view, and wallpaper options
There are lots of ways that you can customize an iPhone to make it your iPhone so that it looks and sounds the way you want it to. You can design your Home screens; set the screen’s brightness, text size, and wallpaper; and choose the sounds your iPhone makes.
Getting Started
In Chapter 4, “Customizing How Your iPhone Works,” you learned how to change many aspects of how your iPhone works. This chapter focuses on how you can change the way you interact with your iPhone and how it interacts with you. Following are key areas you can configure to personalize your iPhone’s personality:
Home screens—The iPhone’s Home screens are the starting point for most everything you do because these screens contain the icons that you tap to access the apps that you want to use. You see and use the Home screens constantly, so it’s a good idea to customize them to your preferences. You can place icons on specific screens, and you can use folders to make your Home screens work better for you.
Screen brightness, Auto-Lock, Raise to Wake, text, view, and wallpaper options—There are a number of ways you can change how your iPhone’s screen looks and works. For example, you can set its brightness level and text size. You can also change the view you have; one option causes the screen to be zoomed in so icons and text are larger and easier to see.
Sounds—Sound is one important way your iPhone uses to communicate with you. The most obvious of these sounds is the ringtone that plays when you receive a call. However, there are many other sounds you can choose to help you know when something is happening. You can also choose to disable sounds so that your iPhone isn’t so noisy. You can also have your iPhone vibrate in conjunction with, or instead of, making sounds.
Notifications
Notifications are the primary way your iPhone communicates with you and there are many options you can configure to change your iPhone’s visual, auditory, and vibratory notifications. How to use notifications is explained in Chapter 2, “Using Your iPhone’s Core Features,” while in Chapter 4, you learn how to configure the types of notifications your iPhone uses to communicate with you.
Customizing Your Home Screens
The iPhone’s Home screens are the starting point for anything you do because these screens contain the icons and folders of icons that you tap to access the apps that you want to use. You see and use the Home screens constantly, so it’s a good idea to customize them to your preferences.
In the background of the Lock screen and every Home screen is the wallpaper image. In the section called “Setting the Wallpaper on the Home and Lock Screens,” you learn how to configure your iPhone’s wallpaper in both locations.
As you know, you can access apps on your Home screens by tapping them. The Home screens come configured with icons in default locations. You can change the location of these icons to be more convenient for you. As you install more apps on your iPhone, it’s a good idea to organize your Home screens so that you can quickly get to the apps you use most frequently. You can move icons around the same screen, move icons between the pages of the Home screen, and organize icons within folders. You can even change the icons that appear on the Home screen Dock. You can also delete icons you no longer need.
Moving Icons Around Your Home Screens
You can move icons around on a Home screen, and you can move icons among screens to change where they are located.
Move to a Home screen by pressing the Touch ID/Home button (except iPhone X) or swiping up from the bottom of the screen (iPhone X).
Swipe to the left or right across the Home screen until the page containing an icon you want to move appears.
Touch (don’t tap because if you do, the app opens instead) and hold on any icon. After a moment, the icons begin jiggling, which indicates that you can move icons on the Home screens. You also see the Delete symbol (x) in the upper-left corner of some icons, which indicates that you can delete both the icon and app (more on this later in this section).
Touch But Don’t Press (3D Touch Models)
If you are working with an iPhone 6s/6s Plus or later model that supports 3D Touch, don’t press on icons when you want to move them; just touch your finger lightly to the screen. If you apply pressure, you might open the Quick Action menu instead. When you just touch an icon and leave your finger on the screen without any pressure, the icons become fuzzy briefly, and then start jiggling to indicate you can move them.
Touch and hold an icon you want to move; it becomes darker to show that you have selected it.
Drag the icon to a new location on the current screen; as you move the icon around the page, other icons separate and are reorganized to enable you to place the icon in its new location.
When the icon is in the location you want, lift your finger. The icon is set in that place. (You don’t have to be precise; the icon automatically snaps into the closest position when you lift your finger off the screen.)
Tap and hold on an icon you want to move to a different page.
Drag the icon to the left edge of the screen to move it to a previous page or to the right edge of the screen to move it to a later page. As you reach the edge of the screen, you move to the previous or next page.
Drag the icon to its new location on the Home screen and lift your finger off the icon. Lift your finger off the screen. The icon is set in its new place.
Continue moving icons until you’ve placed them in the locations you want; then press the Touch ID/Home button once. The icons are locked in their current positions, they stop jiggling, and the Delete symbols disappear.
iPhone X
Because it doesn’t have a Touch ID/Home button, arranging icons and folders on the Home screens on an iPhone X requires slightly different steps. Refer to the online supplement My iPhone X by going to www.informit.com/myiphoneseniors for the steps that are specific to the iPhone X.
Creating Folders to Organize Apps on Your Home Screens
You can place icons into folders to keep them organized and to make more icons available on the same page. To create a folder, do the following:
Move to the Home screen containing icons you want to place in a folder.
Touch and hold an icon until the icons start jiggling; the Delete symbols appear.
Drag one icon on top of another one that you want to be in the new folder together.
When the first icon is on top of the second and a folder appears, lift your finger. The two icons are placed into the new folder, which is named based on the type of icons you place within it. The folder opens and you see its default name.
Edit the name by tapping in the name field.
Delete the current name by tapping the Delete icon.
Change the default name for the folder or type a completely new name if you deleted the previous one.
Tap Done.
Tap outside the folder to close it.
If you’re done organizing the Home screen, press the Touch ID/Home button. The icons stop jiggling.
Locating Folders
You can move a folder to a new location in the same way you can move any icon. Touch and hold (don’t tap or it opens instead) the folder’s icon until the icons start jiggling. Drag the folder icon to where you want it to be.
Placing Icons in Existing Folders
You can add icons to an existing folder like so:
Move to the Home screen containing an icon you want to place in a folder.
Touch and hold an icon until the icons start jiggling and the Delete symbols appear.
Drag the icon you want to place into a folder on top of the folder’s icon so that the folder opens. (The icon doesn’t have to be on the same Home screen page; you can drag an icon from one page and drop it on a folder on a different page.)
When the folder opens, lift your finger from the screen. The icon is placed within the folder.
Adding Apps to Folders Quickly
If you don’t want to change the icon’s location when you place it in the folder, lift your finger as soon as the folder’s icon is highlighted; this places the icon in the folder but doesn’t cause the folder to open. This is faster than waiting for the folder to open, but doesn’t allow you to position the icon within the folder.
Drag the new icon to its location within the folder.
Tap outside the folder. The folder closes.
When you’re done adding icons to folders, press the Touch ID/Home button.
Removing Icons from Folders
To remove an icon from a folder, tap the folder from which you want to remove the icon to open it. Touch and hold the icon you want to remove until it starts jiggling. Drag the icon you want to remove from inside the folder to outside the folder. When you cross the border of the folder, the folder closes and you can place the icon on a Home screen.
Folders and Badges
When you place an icon that has a badge notification (the red circle with a number in it that indicates the number of new items in an app) in a folder, the badge transfers to the folder so that you see it on the folder’s icon. When you place more than one app with a badge notification in the same folder, the badge on the folder becomes the total number of new items for all the apps in the folder. You need to open a folder to see the badges for the individual apps it contains.
Configuring the Home Screen Dock
The Dock on the bottom of the Home screen appears on every page. You can place any icons on the Dock that you want, including folder icons.
Move to the Home screen containing an icon you want to place on the Dock.
Touch and hold an icon until the icons start jiggling and the Delete symbols appear.
Drag an icon that is currently on the Dock from the Dock onto the Home screen to create an empty space on the Dock.
Drag an icon or folder from the Home screen onto the Dock.
Drag the icons on the Dock around so they are in the order you want them to be.
Press the Touch ID/Home button to set the icons in their current places.
Deleting Icons
You can delete icons from a Home screen to remove them from your iPhone. When you delete an app’s icon, its data is also deleted and you won’t be able to use the app anymore (of course, you can download it again if you change your mind).
Move to the Home screen containing an icon you want to delete.
Touch and hold an icon until the icons start jiggling and the Delete symbols appear (you can delete icons that are inside folders, too).
Tap the icon’s Delete symbol.
Tap Delete. The app and any associated data on your iPhone are deleted.
There are a number of settings you can configure to suit your viewing preferences and how your iPhone locks/wakes:
Brightness—Because you continually look at your iPhone’s screen, it should be the right brightness level for your eyes. However, the screen is also a large user of battery power, so the dimmer an iPhone’s screen is, the longer its battery lasts. You should find a good balance between viewing comfort and battery life.
Night Shift—This feature changes the color profile of the screen after dark. It is supposed to make the light produced by the iPhone more suitable to darker conditions. You can set the color temperature to your preferences and can set a schedule if you want Night Shift to be activated automatically.
Auto-Lock—The Auto-Lock setting causes your iPhone to lock and go to sleep after a specific amount of inactivity. This is good for security as it is less likely someone can pick up and use your phone if you let it sit for a while. It also extends battery life because it puts the iPhone to sleep when you aren’t using it.
Raise to Wake—This setting, available on iPhone 6s/6s Plus and later models, enables you to wake up the iPhone by lifting it up. This is useful because you don’t even need to press a button, just lift the phone and you see the Lock screen, giving you quick access to the current time, the Audio Player, notifications, and widgets. However, some people find this feature more annoying than helpful, so if the phone waking when you lift it up bothers you, disable this setting on your phone.
Text Size/Bold—As you use your iPhone, you’ll be constantly working with text so it’s also important to configure the text size to meet your preferences. You can use the Bold setting to bold text to make it easier to read.
View—The iPhone 6 and later models offer two views. The Standard view maximizes screen space and the Zoomed view makes things on the screen larger, making them easier to see, but less content fits on the screen. You can choose the view that works best for you.
Wallpaper—Wallpaper is the image you see “behind” the icons on your Home screens. Because you see this image so often, you might as well have an image that you want to see or that you believe makes using the Home screens easier and faster. You can use the iPhone’s default wallpaper images, or you can use any photo available on your iPhone. You can also set the wallpaper you see on the iPhone’s Lock screen (you can use the same image as on the Home screens or a different one). Although it doesn’t affect productivity or usability of the iPhone very much, choosing your own wallpaper to see in the background of the Home and Lock screens makes your iPhone more personal to you and is just plain fun.
Setting the Screen Brightness and Night Shift Using the Settings App
To set the screen brightness and Night Shift, perform the following steps:
In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness.
Drag the slider to the right to raise the base brightness or to the left to lower it. A brighter screen uses more power but is easier to see.
Tap Night Shift.
To have Night Shift activate automatically, set the Scheduled switch to on (green); if you don’t want it to activate automatically, skip to step 11.
Tap the From/To setting.
To have Night Shift on between sunset and sunrise, tap Sunset to Sunrise and skip to step 10.
To set a custom schedule for Night Shift, tap Custom Schedule.
Tap Turn On At and swipe up or down on the hour, minute, and AM/PM wheels to set the time when you want Night Shift to activate.
Tap Turn Off At and use the time wheels to set when you want Night Shift to turn off.
Tap Night Shift.
To manually turn Night Shift on at any time, set the Manually Enable Until Tomorrow switch to on (green). Night Shift activates and remains on until sunrise when it shuts off automatically. (You can manually turn off Night Shift by setting the Manually Enable Until Tomorrow switch to off [white].)
Drag the COLOR TEMPERATURE slider to the right to make the Night Shift effect more pronounced or to the left to make it less warm. If Night Shift isn’t active when you drag the slider, it goes into effect as you move the slider so you can see the effect the temperature you select has.
Tap Back.
Setting the Screen Brightness and Night Shift Using the Control Center
You can use the Control Center to quickly adjust brightness and Night Shift as follows:
Swipe up from the bottom of the Home screen (all models except the iPhone X) or swipe down from the upper-right corner of the screen (iPhone X, not shown in the figure) to open the Control Center.
Swipe up or down on the Brightness slider to increase or decrease the brightness, respectively.
To turn Night Shift on or off, press and hold on the Brightness slider.
Use the Brightness slider to change the screen’s brightness (this does the same thing as using the slider on the Control Center, but since it is larger here, it is a bit easier to use).
Tap the Night Shift icon to turn Night Shift on. When on, the Night Shift icon is orange.
Tap the Night Shift icon to turn Night Shift off. When off, the Night Shift icon is white.
Tap outside the tools to return to the Control Center.
Tap the downward-facing arrow at the top of the Control Center to close it.
Setting Auto-Lock and Raise to Wake
To set Auto-lock and Raise to Wake, perform the following steps:
In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness to open the Display & Brightness settings screen.
Tap Auto-Lock.
Tap the amount of idle time you want to pass before the iPhone automatically locks and goes to sleep. You can choose from 30 seconds or 1 to 5 minutes; choose Never if you want to only manually lock your iPhone. I recommend that you keep Auto-Lock set to a relatively small value to conserve your iPhone’s battery and to make it more secure. Of course, the shorter you set this time to be, the more frequently you have to unlock your iPhone.
Tap Back.
If you want to be able to wake your phone by lifting it, set the Raise to Wake switch to on (green); to disable this feature, set the switch to off (white).
Setting Text Size and Bold
To change the text size or make all text bold, perform the following steps:
In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness to open the Display & Brightness settings screen.
Tap Text Size. This control changes the size of text in all the apps that support the iPhone’s Dynamic Type feature.
Drag the slider to the right to increase the size of text or to the left to decrease it. As you move the slider, the text at the top of the screen resizes so you can see the effect of the change you are making.
When you are happy with the size of the text, tap Back.
If you want to make all of the text on your iPhone bold, set the Bold Text switch to on (green) and move to step 6. If you don’t want to bold the text, skip the next step.
Tap Continue. Your iPhone restarts. All the text is in bold, making it easier to read.
Setting Text Size Using the Control Center
To change the text size with the Control Center, perform the following steps:
Swipe up from the bottom of the Home screen (all models except the iPhone X) or swipe down from the upper-right corner of the screen (iPhone X, not shown in the figure) to open the Control Center.
Tap the Text Size icon. (If you don’t see this icon, you need to add it to the Control Center. See Chapter 4, “Customizing How Your iPhone Works,” for details.)
Tap above the shaded area to increase the text size.
Tap below the shaded area to decrease the text size.
Tap outside the tool to return to the Control Center.
Tap the downward-facing arrow at the top of the Control Center to close it.
In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness to open the Display & Brightness settings screen.
Tap View; if you don’t see this option, your iPhone doesn’t support it and you can skip the rest of these steps.
Tap Standard.
Look at the sample screen.
Swipe to the left or right to see examples of what other screens look like in the Standard view.
Look at the next sample screen.
Swipe to the left or right to see examples of what other screens look like in the Standard view.
Tap Zoomed. The sample screens change to reflect the Zoomed view.
Swipe to the left and right to preview the other sample screens in the Zoomed view.
If you want to keep the current view, tap Cancel and skip the rest of these steps.
To change the view, tap the view you want.
Tap Set (if Set is grayed out, the view you selected is already set and you can skip the rest of these steps).
Tap Use Zoomed (this is Use Standard if you are switching to the Standard view). Your iPhone restarts and uses the new view.
Setting the Wallpaper on the Home and Lock Screens
To configure your wallpaper, perform the following steps:
In the Settings app, tap Wallpaper. You see the current wallpaper set for the Lock and Home screens.
Tap Choose a New Wallpaper. The Choose screen has two sections. The top section enables you to choose one of the default wallpaper images (Dynamic, Stills, or Live), whereas the lower section shows you the photos available on your iPhone. If you don’t have any photos stored on your iPhone, you can nly choose from the default images. To choose a default image, continue with step 3; to use one of your photos as wallpaper, skip to step 8.
Tap Dynamic if you want to use dynamic wallpaper, Stills if you want to use a static image, or Live if you want to use a Live Photo. These steps show selecting a Live Photo, but using a dynamic or still image is similar.
Swipe up and down the screen to browse the images available to you.
Tap the image you want to use as wallpaper.
Tap Perspective to use the Perspective view of the wallpaper, tap Still if you want a static version of the image, or tap Live Photo to use a Live Photo. (See the sidebar “More on View Options” for an explanation of these terms.)
Tap Set and move to step 15.
Wallpaper Options Explained
Dynamic wallpaper has motion (kind of like a screen saver on a computer). Stills are static images. Live Photos show motion when you touch and hold on them. Live Photos are available only on iPhone 6s/6s Plus or later models. On other models, you see only the Dynamic and Stills options.
To use a photo as wallpaper, swipe up the screen to browse the sources of photos available to you; these include All Photos, Favorites, Selfies, albums, and so on.
Working with Photos
To learn how to work with the photos on your iPhone, see Chapter 14, “Viewing and Editing Photos and Video with the Photos App.”
Tap the source containing the photo you want to use.
Swipe up and down the selected source to browse its photos.
Tap the photo you want to use. The photo appears on the Move and Scale screen, which you can use to resize and move the image around.
The Perspective view can be a bit difficult to describe because it is subtle. This view magnifies the wallpaper image when you tilt your iPhone. It is sometimes noticeable and sometimes not, depending on the image you are using for wallpaper. The best thing to do is to enable it to see if you notice any difference or disable it if you prefer not to use it for the specific images you use as wallpaper. You can enable or disable it at any time for your wallpaper on the Lock and Home screens. To change the view without changing the wallpaper, move to the Wallpaper screen and tap the wallpaper (tap the Lock or Home screen) you want to change. Tap Perspective to use the Perspective view or Still if you want the image to be static. To save the view, tap Set or to leave it as it is, tap Cancel.
When you choose a Live Photo as wallpaper, you can touch and hold on the screen to see the image’s motion. Note that when you apply a Live Photo to the Home screen wallpaper, it becomes a static image for which you can choose the Still or Perspective view.
Use your fingers to unpinch to zoom in or pinch to zoom out, and hold down and drag the photo around the screen until it appears how you want the wallpaper to look.
Tap Perspective to use the Perspective view of the wallpaper (see the sidebar “More on View Options”), tap Still to use a static version of the image, or tap Live Photo to use a Live Photo (available only when you are working with a Live Photo on iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus or later models).
Tap Set.
Tap Set Lock Screen or Set Home Screen to apply the wallpaper to only one of those screens; tap Set Both to apply the same wallpaper in both locations. The next time you move to the screen you selected, you see the wallpaper you chose.
If you set the wallpaper in only one location, tap Choose (not shown on a figure) to move back to the Choose screen and repeat steps 3−15 to set the wallpaper for the other location.
Choosing the Sounds and Vibratory Feedback Your iPhone Uses
Sound and vibrations are two ways your iPhone uses to communicate with you. You can configure the sounds and vibrations the phone uses in two ways. One is by choosing the general sounds and vibrations your iPhone makes, which is covered in this section. You can also configure the sounds and vibrations that apps use for notifications about certain events; this is covered in Chapter 4.
If you have an iPhone 7 or later model, it offers haptic feedback, which means the phone vibrates slightly when something happens, such as when you make a choice on a selection wheel. You can determine whether you want to feel this feedback or not. If you don’t have one of these models, you won’t see references to haptics on your Sounds screens.
To configure your iPhone’s general sounds, do the following:
On the Settings screen, tap Sounds & Haptics (iPhone 7 and later) or Sounds (earlier models).
Set the Vibrate on Ring switch to on (green) if you want your iPhone to also vibrate when it rings.
Set the Vibrate on Silent switch to on (green) if you want your iPhone to vibrate when you have it muted.
Set the volume of the ringer and alert tones by dragging the slider to the left or right.
Set the Change with Buttons switch to on (green) if you want to also be able to change the ringer volume using the Volume buttons on the side of the phone.
Tap Ringtone. On the resulting screen, you can set the sound and vibration your iPhone uses when a call comes in.
Individual Ringtones and Vibrations
The ringtone and vibration you set in steps 6−14 are the default or general settings. These are used for all callers except for people in your Contacts app for whom you’ve set specific ringtones or vibrations. In that case, the contact’s specific ringtone and vibration are used instead of the defaults. See Chapter 6, “Managing Contacts,” to learn how to configure specific ringtones and vibrations for contacts.
Swipe up and down the screen to see all the ringtones available to you. There are two sections of sounds on this screen: RINGTONES and ALERT TONES. These work in the same way; alert tones tend to be shorter sounds. At the top of the RINGTONES section, you see any custom ringtones you have configured on your phone; a dark line separates those from the default ringtones that are below the custom ones.
Tap a sound, and it plays; tap it again to stop it.
Repeat steps 7 and 8 until you have selected the sound you want to have as your general ringtone.
If necessary, swipe down the screen so you see the Vibration section at the top.
Tap Vibration. A list of Standard and Custom vibrations is displayed.
Swipe up and down the screen to see all the vibrations available. The STANDARD section contains the default vibrations, and in the CUSTOM section you can tap Create New Vibration to create your own vibration patterns, as discussed in the “Sounding Off” sidebar at the end of this section.
Tap a vibration. It “plays” so you can feel it; tap it again to stop it.
Repeat steps 12 and 13 until you’ve selected the general vibration you want to use; you can tap None at the bottom of the Vibration screen (not shown on the figure) below the CUSTOM section if you don’t want to have a general vibration.
Tap Ringtone.
Tap Back. The ringtone you selected is shown on the Sounds and Haptics (or Sounds) screen next to the Ringtone label.
Use steps 7−14 with the Text Tone screen to set the sound and vibration used when you receive a new text. The process works the same as for ringtones, though the screens look a bit different. For example, the ALERT TONES section is at the top of the screen because you are more likely to want a short sound for new texts.
When you’re done setting the text tone, tap Back.
Using the same process as you did for ringtones and text tones, set the sound and vibrations for the rest of the events on the list.
If you don’t like the audible feedback when you tap keys on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, slide the Keyboard Clicks switch to off (white) to disable that sound. The keyboard is silent as you type on it.
If you don’t want your iPhone to make a sound when you lock it, slide the Lock Sound switch to off (white). Your iPhone no longer makes this sound when you press the Side button to put it to sleep and lock it.
Set the System Haptics switch to off (white) if you prefer not to experience vibratory feedback for events. (System Haptics are available on iPhone 7 or later models.)
