iOS 18: How to Customize Your iPhone's Home Screen Widgets

Apple released iOS 18 to the general public on Sept. 16, a week after the company announced its new iPhone 16 lineup, Apple Watch Series 10 and more at its September event. The operating system gets you customize more aspects of your iPhone, like your lock screen and home screen. It also lets you turn your home screen apps into widgets and resize those widgets with ease.

In past iOS versions, you’d have to delete a widget if you didn’t like its size. After deleting it, you’d have to go through the whole process of choosing the right size, adding it to your screen and then finding the right spot for it. Now, you don’t have to take those extra steps and can instantly resize your widget.

Here’s how you can add and resize your widgets from your home screen in iOS 18.

How to add widgets to your home screen

Long-press on an app until a menu appears. Then, you’ll see some new tiled icons in the shape of different widgets.

The Photos app with four widget sizes — Apple/Screenshot by CNET

Some apps, like Weather, show four different sized options: the app icon, a small tile, a longer tile and then a large tile that looks like a whole page. Other apps, like Contacts, will only show the tile icon and one other tile option. Tap the size widget you want to try and your app will expand on your home screen in real time. But some apps, like Messages, don’t have widgets so you won’t see these options.

Prior to the iOS 18, you had to long-press on your home screen, tap the plus (+) sign in the top right corner of your screen and then search for the right widget. Now you can easily add widgets without look for them.

How to change the size of widgets on your home screen

You can also change the size of widgets the same way. Long-press on a widget until the menu appears, and then select the widget size you want to try.

If you’ve arranged your apps in a particular way around your home screen, adding or changing the size of widgets will likely disrupt your custom layout. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to lock in custom app layouts, so you might have to rearrange your apps again after adding a widget or changing its size.

For more on iOS 18, here’s my iOS 18 review, how to get rid of your flashlight from your lock screen and our iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check out what iOS 18.1 could bring to your iPhone soon.