Of all the great features that came to our iPhones this fall with iOS 16, the most easily recognized and “everyone will use it” should be the new overhauled lock screen. It’s all about personalization – you have a lot of options to change its appearance and a lot of widgets to add more useful information. Where it used to be that every iPhone had the same lock screen with different static wallpapers, with iOS 16 everyone’s screen will be their personal.
Customizing your iOS 16 lock screen is easy and intuitive, but there are some subtleties you may miss. Here’s how you can customize your lock screen.
Start with a long press
To start customizing your lock screen, long-press it somewhere other than your notifications. You will notice that your lock screen has zoomed out and there are two buttons at the bottom of the screen: a customize to add a new lock screen and a (+) button. That’s right, you can have several lock screen setups and either switch between them manually (long press to go to this interface and then swipe left and right) or automatically (defines the lock screen in certain focus mode).
At the bottom of each lock screen you will see a Focus link Buttons, and the name of the type of wallpaper at the top: photo, emoji, weather, astronomy or color.
You can also edit the current lock screen in the Settings app under Wallpapers.
To delete a lock screen, long press to enter the lock screen selection mode, swipe to the lock screen you want to remove, and long press on it. Select Delete wallpaper From the bottom of the screen.
Choose a style
When you create a new custom lock screen, the first thing you should do is choose your style. There are different options to choose from for each style.
People: A photo background that starts with a filter in your photo library for people only.
Photo: A photo background selected from your photo library.
Photo Shuffle: Automatically change background image throughout the day. You can adjust the frequency between Hourly, Daily, On Tap or On Wake. You can also use featured photos automatically selected by the Photos app (and select from a wide range of categories) or select photos manually.
Emoji: Take six emojis and they will be turned into a pattern
Weather: A dynamic background that changes to represent the current local climate.
Astronomy: Shows a moving globe that shows the Earth or a close-up view of your position on it (including live cloud data and accurate sunlight), the moon or a detail of it (including the correct lunar phase), or the entire solar system.
Color: Choose a background color and get a subtle gradient effect in six different styles.
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Customize your time
Once you have chosen a style, time is the first thing you want to customize This is the biggest component of your lock screen, and there are plenty of options to choose from
Tap time to pull up Font color There are six font styles to choose from over a dozen colors to choose from, as well as a full-color wheel that lets you choose any color. If you do not use Arabic numbers, tap Globe to switch to Arabic Indic or Devanagari.
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There are five widget slots for populating real-time data from your favorite apps. Most of them can be tapped: they show some basic information and when tapped launch the corresponding app. Apps that can provide sensitive information will not submit their information until Face ID recognizes you, just as notification details are hidden until you identify them.
Over time: There’s room for a single thin horizontal widget-it doesn’t have to be a date anymore!
Under Time: There are four squares / round spots, but some widgets are double-width to show more information. So you can end up with one, two, three, or four widgets here.
There are many widgets for Apple’s built-in apps like Calendar and Weather, but iOS 16 also includes a framework for developers to add their own. This is almost the same as creating complexity for the Apple Watch (though not the “corner complexity”), so many apps have a good chance of having a lock screen widget.
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Change options, filters and more
For each lock screen style, there is a set of options to change Long press to enter the lock screen edit mode and tap Customize on the setup you want to tweak.
For photos, you can swipe left and right to change the filter. To disable perspective zoom, tap the menu button (…) on the bottom right – an AI-powered feature that draws the foreground theme from your photo and puts it in front of your time and widget. You can switch between different astronomy views, emoji patterns or color gradients. For the photo shuffle screen, you can tap the bottom-left button to re-select which photos you want to feature and how often to change them.
How do you want your notifications to appear?
The last thing you want to customize your lock screen is to choose how you want the notifications to look. You don’t do this in the lock screen customization area, but in the settings app.
By default, notifications are displayed in a new stack format that displays more recent notifications at the top and fades the others behind it. You can swipe down the stack to see a count of your notifications, or you can swipe up the stack to see the full list, as in previous versions of iOS. But in Settings> A Notification > Display You can change the default in any of these views. Whatever you choose, you can swipe up and down between them.
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Link a focus mode
Finally, if you are a fan of Focus, you can link a Focus to it. Just tap Link focus Button at the bottom of the lock screen customization interface. Or, open Settings> Focus, select the focus mode you want to link, and select it on the customize screens.
This feature works in both directions! If your phone enters that focus mode (automatically triggers sleep while sleeping or driving while in the car), the corresponding lock screen will be applied. But if you long press on the lock screen interface and manually swipe to select that lock screen, focus mode will also be enabled. So, if work focus mode is enabled, your iPhone will move to your work lock screen, but you can also enable work focus mode by switching to that lock screen.