Fall is finally here, and that means it’s time to redecorate. I’m not just talking about your dorm; I’m talking about your phone!
Your home screen is your home away from home, and that must reflect the time of year. If you don’t know how to prepare your phone for autumn, I have a few tips to help your phone feel like fall.
choose a Fall aesthetic
There are quite a few ways that one could go when choosing what kind of fall they’re going to have. The main decision comes from deciding whether you want to lean into the “sweaters and crunchy leaves” fall or the “Halloween” fall.
If you want to go with the former, there are probably going to be a few motifs throughout your phone imagery. This will entail a lighter color scheme, with more of a mixture of pale and mid-tone oranges and varying kinds of beige. You could also include some classic kinds of images with this particular theme, like hay bales, cute pumpkins, and the essential fall road.
If you want to go the spookier route, lean into darker tones of orange or brown. Maybe, depending on the vibe you want, include some dark grays, black, or even some purples. The imagery for this aesthetic can actually go so many different ways depending on the kind of spooky you want. This can be skeletons, jack-o’-lanterns, witches — whatever your heart desires.
create a structure
Once you’ve decided what aesthetic you want, you have to come up with a general structure. The structure of your home screen is almost as important as the content. You may be wondering, “What kind of structure can a home screen have?”
The most important structural element of any home screen is the widget placements. Now, there are widgets for apps that are already built into the phone. However, to get widgets of specific photographs, you’ll have to download Widgetsmith.
Widgetsmith is a wonderful app that fuels all of my home screen decorating adventures. With this app, you can not only make widgets for certain photos, but you can make others that show the calendar, battery life, or (one of my personal favorites) the phases of the moon.
It also helps create a great formation for all your apps and pictures. Choosing a formation is a very personal task that should fit your preferences, but I usually go with something like what’s shown above. That’s just one way you could do it out of hundreds; mix and match to make it what works best for you.
Pick your pictures
Now comes the fun part! For this portion, Pinterest will be your best friend. What I like to do is find the background image and the images for the main widgets.
For the background, try to find something more subdued. We want to make sure that all of the widgets and app icons stand out against the background. For instance, if we’re going for a spookier theme, a darker background would work better so that the app icons stick out. This also goes for lighter themes, but instead with a light background.
After you’ve got your background, you can start picking the pictures for your widgets (aka my favorite part!). This is where you can really let your fall heart’s desires be free. Find literally any aesthetic or not-so-aesthetic pictures you want.
If you want a little more guidance, stick to that overarching theme you decided on in the beginning. It’ll make your home screen look much more consistent throughout. When you’ve got the images you want, just put them in the widgets and admire the beauty. Then, we move on to the final step.
app icons
This is probably the hardest part of the process, but definitely the most rewarding. The first step is to pick out which apps you’re going to have on your main home screen. Once you’ve decided which apps you want, we go back to our trusty friend: Pinterest.
This part can be a little tricky. The best thing to look up is “[your theme] app icons,” and you’ll probably be able to find something. For my fall home screen this year, I used the icon pack shown above. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on Pinterest, there are some other options. An app that has a great selection of more minimalist app icons is Brass. You can just download the icons straight from the app here, but I’ll say the selections aren’t as creative as those on Pinterest.
Once you’ve got your app icons, it’s time to create bookmarks, and not the kind for books. For iPhones, go to the Shortcuts app that’s already on your phone, hit the plus button in the top right corner, and select “Open App.” Once you hit that, click on the button that says “App,” and choose the app with the icon you want to change. Then, click the down arrow on the top of the screen and click “Add to Home Screen.” Lastly, click “Image,” and then choose a photo and a name. Repeat the process for all the other apps that you desire, put them all into place, and call your work done.
This process may be kind of intimidating, but trust me. As an iPhone decorating warrior, I can say that it’s always worth it in the end. It’s a comfort to know that your home screen is just as festive as your heart.
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