Don’t buy expensive icon packs

How to Use Custom Icons on iOS for Free

A quick tutorial

I bet you’ve heard it, but if you haven’t, here’s the short version: You can set custom app icons on your iPhone or iPad with the Shortcuts app from Apple. It’s a very nice workaround to make your home screen look the way you want it to look. Don’t get me wrong: It’s not close to what Android offers in terms of customization, but it’s a nice start. Let’s have a look!

Image by author, background photo from Unsplash

Requirements

As mentioned above, you need the Apple Shortcuts app. But don’t worry, it’s a free download on the App Store, and no hassle to use.

Secondly, you need the Apple Files app to download icons or image files that you want to use on your home screen. This app is probably already installed on your device. If not, it’s also a free download from the App Store.

Thirdly, you need at least iOS 14. I’d prefer iOS 14.3 as this makes the workaround much more pleasant to use.

Get some icons

Where do you get icons? Well, you can actually use any image files (jpg, png) if you wish. You can find millions of icons for free online. But that takes a bit more time to do. Or you can get a pre-packed set of icons. Many, many, maaannny people sell these online, sometimes for ridiculous prices up to 30$. Don’t do that! I wrote an article about that topic by the way.

Why I Released Free iOS Icons When Others Made Thousands of Dollars

There are a few free options out there. I created several free icon packs, myself. Feel free to download those. You will get a download link with a .zip file including all icons in .png format. Unpack the .zip file and proceed with the instructions below.

How-to

I’ll give you a short step-by-step guide on how to set the icons using the Shortcuts app. I decided to not include images to keep the page length in check. I think the instructions are quite clear anyway.

1. Firstly open the Shortcuts app on your iOS…