Help, I’m Addicted to the Home Screen Update for iOS 14!

Finally, iPhone users can all live our Tumblr aesthetic dreams with the new iOS 14 update. While other mobile OSes have had similar features for a while, iPhone users are running wild with new home screen customization options in the latest update! The problem? I cannot figure out how to do half of this and I’m just screaming at my phone more than anything.

For those not in the era of Tumblr teens, the “aesthetic” idea is basically imagery that appeals to your sense of comfort. Back in the days of Tumblr blogging, we used to label these images that fit our tastes as “aesthetic,” and they were typically pictures of bodies with no faces in big sweaters drinking a coffee.

Surprisingly, you can now use that image to represent your Starbucks app. For instance, my phone app now has a picture of an old rotary phone with flowers behind it. I have a lot of sunflowers on mine because I love them because they’re dead. ANYWAY.

There are plenty of articles out there with instructions on how to change your phone’s look. It’s kind of fun to mix and match to see what we come up with, from using Widgets to add images for the look we desire to changing all our icons to whatever images we want—not quite an official feature and something there have been various levels of workarounds to enable for a while, but the update has people pushing the concept to impressive effect. (The new icons are technically shortcuts created in the Shortcuts app, but the ability to hide app icons from the home screen really sells the effect of the replacements.)

Many have been taking to Twitter to share their home screens, and honestly, it’s a mix of us all having too much time on our hands because of the world at large and being a generation of kids on their electronics because some of these are incredible (and clearly took a long time, if the tweets about it have anything to say).

Did you create your own home screen? Let’s see your adventure in the comments below! (And someone please help me. I cannot figure out these widgets. I just want a picture of Robert Downey Jr. in a plaid suit on my phone’s home screen.)

(image: Kim White/Getty Images)

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Rachel Leishman

Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She's been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff's biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she's your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell's dog, Brisket. Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.

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