iOS 16 and iPadOS 17 allow new iPhone and iPad users to personalize their Lock Screens using some advanced tools. These include the ability to change the time’s font, size, color, script, and more. Users additionally get to place widgets on the Lock Screen now, enabling them to glance at informative data more easily. So what can you actually customize, and how to do it? Let’s find out!
What you can customize on your iDevice’s Lock Screen
Let’s start by listing the user interface elements that you can actually tweak on the Lock Screen. Prior to iOS 16 and iPadOS 17, users had been limited to changing the wallpaper in several formats. These included live wallpapers, animated wallpapers, static ones, and those that change depending on your dark/light mode preference. The company has now retired most of the aforementioned categories and rebuilt the Lock Screen from the ground up. iOS 16 and iPadOS 17 now support the following customizations:
- Top widget area: Fits one widget, such as Weather, Calendar, or other ones offered by first- and third-party apps
- Time:
- Multiple typeface options to pick from
- Multiple colors with color picker support
- Multiple script choices
- Bottom (iOS) or left (iPadOS) widget area: Fits four small widgets or two big ones (or a combination of both) on iOS and over a dozen on iPadOS. Many first- and third-party apps have introduced support for it, too
- Depth effect: When enabled, certain wallpapers can surface parts of them over time, adding a 3D effect
- Live Photos: They animate when you wake up your iDevice
- Focus mode: You can associate a certain Lock Screen setup with a specific Focus mode
- Wallpaper: Obviously, you get to change the wallpaper, but we’ll dive into the specifics later on
- Album art size: You can choose between compact and full-screen cover art sizes for playing media
Customizing the Lock Screen
- Start by tapping and holding on the Lock Screen. This will trigger the editing mode.
- Click on Customize to alter the existing one, or tap the plus (+) icon to create a new one from scratch. We will demonstrate the fresh creation mechanism here — as it will also encompass the customization process.
- At the very top, you will find:
- Photos: You choose a wallpaper from your photo library
- People: You pick photos of a person detected in your photo library
- Photo Shuffle: Shuffles through several photos
- Emoji: Allows you to select several emojis and create a patterned wallpaper accordingly
- Weather: Turns the local weather conditions and time of day into a realistic, real-time wallpaper
- Astronomy: Includes a selection of Earth, Moon, and other shots
- Color: This lets you pick a plain color and optionally apply filters and add gradients to it
- If you scroll through the generated wallpaper list, you will also find a collection of built-in wallpapers, such as Pride, Unity, Clownfish, etc.
- Pick one of the wallpapers to proceed with the Lock Screen creation and customization process.
- iOS will highlight the section you can tweak, such as the widgets, time, etc.
- Click on any of the highlighted elements and choose from the available options we’ve listed in the previous section of this article.
- Tap on Add once you’re done. Choose Set as Wallpaper Pair if you want the Home Screen to have the Lock Screen’s wallpaper.
- If you’d rather have a different Home Screen wallpaper, tap Customize Home Screen.
- There you get to choose between the Lock Screen wallpaper in both its original and blurred-out forms. Alternatively, you can also choose a plain-color wallpaper or a gradient one.
- After you create more than one Lock Screen setup, you get to link individual setups to your Focus modes.
- To do so, tap and hold on to the Lock Screen to go into edit mode.
- Click on Focus.
- Choose one of your Focus modes to link the Lock Screen setup to.
That’s it! Now you can create as many Lock Screen setups as possible and switch between them freely. If you dislike one of them, you could always go into edit mode, then swipe up on the setup to delete it.
The customizable Lock Screen certainly makes iOS and iPadOS more appealing to certain Android users. Apple is slowly working on making the operating systems more personal, flexible, and feature-rich. From being limited to just changing the wallpaper to this. iOS and iPadOS are truly maturing into more complete operating systems. If you’re looking for ways to customize the Always-On display on your iPhone, we’ve also prepared a dedicated guide to help you out.