Technologies

Why You Should Customize the Apps and Widgets on Your iPhone Home Screen

Make your iPhone your own.

This story is part of 12 Days of Tips, helping you make the most of your tech, home and health during the holiday season.

The background wallpaper isn’t the only way that you can personalize your iPhone’s home screen.

Thanks to a built-in application, as well as a third-party one that you can download for free from the App Store, you can pretty easily create themes for your home screen, allowing you to create your own unique app icons and widgets.

If you really want to make your iPhone your own, you’ll want to read on to learn how to customize your home screen.

For more about personalizing your iPhone, check out the best iPhone cases in 2022 and how to get rid of some of the most annoying features on iOS 16.

How to change your app icons on your iPhone

The applications that live on the home screen have their own logos, but you can use a native iOS feature to change the look of any app icon:

Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone (it’s already preinstalled).
Tap the plus icon in the top right corner.
Select Add Action.
In the search bar, type Open app and select the Open App action.
Next, tap App and select the app you want to customize.
Then tap the downward-facing arrow next to Open App at the top.
From the menu, tap Add to Home Screen.
Where it says Home Screen Name and Icon, rename the shortcut to anything you’d like.
Next, go into your web browser of choice and find a new icon image. You can search for something like «Facebook icon aesthetic.» When you find an image you like, save it to your photos.
Go back to the Shortcuts app and tap the icon under Home Screen Name and Icon. Select Choose Photo and tap on the image you just saved. You can zoom in or out on the image. Tap Choose.
Finally, hit Add.

Now you have a customized app on your phone (it’s actually a bookmark). You can delete the original app from your home screen, but you’ll easily be able to find it in your App Library.

Customize the widgets on your iPhone home screen

Apps aren’t the only think you can customize. With the help of this third-party app, you can also add a little flavor to your widgets:

Download the Widgetsmith app on your iPhone.
In the app, select the size of the widget you’d like to customize — your options are small, medium and large.
Tap the widget to customize it. You can change the font and colors. Go back once you’re done and tap Save.
Go to your home screen and hold and press down anywhere on the screen.
Once you’re in edit mode, tap the plus icon in the top left corner and search for Widgetsmith. Tap the icon.
Select the widget size you’d like to add to your home screen and tap Add Widget.
You can change the widget by pressing down on the app and selecting Edit Widget. That’s all! Now your home screen has different-size icons for a customized look.

You can create widgets for certain features and applications, including photos, time, date, Weather (paid), Health, battery, Calendar, Reminders, tides (paid), and astronomy.

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Oct. 22 #598

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Oct. 22, No. 598.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one — I definitely have at least two of these in my house. Some of the answers are a bit tough to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Catch all.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: A mess of items.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

BATE, LICE, SLUM, CAPE, HOLE, CARE, BARE, THEN, SLAM, SAMBA, BACK

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

TAPE, COIN, PENCIL, BATTERY, SHOELACE, THUMBTACK

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is JUNKDRAWER. To find it, look for the J that’s five letters down on the far-left row, and wind down, over and then up.

Quick tips for Strands

#1: To get more clue words, see if you can tweak the words you’ve already found, by adding an «S» or other variants. And if you find a word like WILL, see if other letters are close enough to help you make SILL, or BILL.

#2: Once you get one theme word, look at the puzzle to see if you can spot other related words.

#3: If you’ve been given the letters for a theme word, but can’t figure it out, guess three more clue words, and the puzzle will light up each letter in order, revealing the word.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Oct. 22, #1586

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Oct. 22, No. 1,586.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle features some letters I don’t often guess, but it’s not terribly difficult. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has one vowel.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with S.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with T.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to an action displaying spectacular skill and daring.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is STUNT.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, Oct. 21, No. 1,585 was DETOX.

Recent Wordle answers

Oct. 17, No. 1,581: GROSS
Oct. 18, No. 1,582: HAVEN
Oct. 19, No. 1,583: IDEAL
Oct. 20, No. 1,584: LIMBO

Quick tips for Wordle

#1: Check our list ranking the popularity of all the letters in the alphabet and choose your starter words accordingly. (TRAIN, STERN and AUDIO are good.)

#2: Don’t forget that letters can be used more than once.

#3: Many words are similar. You don’t want to use up multiple guesses that don’t advance your cause. So if the puzzle is STA_E, don’t guess STARE, STATE and STALE. Guess something that uses that R, T and L, like TWIRL.