iOS 18 could bring a more customizable Home Screen to your iPhone with the ability to arrange icons more freely, according to a new rumor.
Mark Gurman wrote in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg that iOS 18 will feature a “more customizable” Home Screen on iPhone.
Gurman wouldn’t reveal any specifics, but MacRumors has learned interesting details as to how that might work. While the icon grid will stay, iOS 18 will apparently let you move app icons around the Home Screen and arrange them more freely.
iOS 18 could bring a more customizable Home Screen
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:
While app icons will likely remain locked to an invisible grid system on the Home Screen, to ensure there is some uniformity, our sources say that users will be able to arrange icons more freely on iOS 18. For example, we expect that the update will introduce the ability to create blank spaces, rows and columns between app icons.
You can do this today, but it involves a little bit of trickery and requires specialized apps like Widgetsmith and Apple’s Shortcuts automation software.
“The update will introduce additional customization options for the Home Screen, and this could result in the biggest Home Screen revamp in several years,” reads the article. The author claims Apple’s solution will be “more convenient and official.”
AI features in iOS 18
Gurman reiterates that iOS 18 will include new “AI tools that help manage your daily life.” He said earlier that iOS 18 would bring AI-enabled improvements to Siri, which is expected to take advantage of large language models.
However, some watchers doubt Apple will be able to bring ChatGPT-like generative AI features this year because the company has fallen behind rivals in AI. Rumor has it that the company will choose to run large language models on-device while tapping into the cloud for generative AI features.
RCS support coming in an iOS 18 update
To that end, Apple could tap into the power of the cloud through external partnerships for chatbot functionality like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, China’s Baidu and Anthropic (we haven’t heard about Anthropic before).
Against that backdrop, iOS 18 should be a significant update for the company, so much so that some Apple executives apparently view iOS 18 as the biggest software update in the iPhone’s history.
iOS 18 should also bring RCS support for an improved messaging experience between iPhone and Android. Apple will preview iOS 18 and other software at the upcoming WWDC24 in June ahead of public launches this fall.