Customizing Your iPhone Lock Screen In iOS 16

A big new feature in iOS 16 is the ability to customize your lock screen using photos, colors, emoji and other special styles. You can also add widgets to your lock screen and set Focus modes to change your lock screen automatically at different times.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to customize your iPhone's Lock Screen in iOS 16.
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So probably the most visible new feature in iOS 16 is the ability to highly customize your iPhone's Lock Screen. Now you see your Lock Screen when you first wakeup your iPhone. But if you're on the Home Screen already you can get back to there by tapping and dragging from the top of the screen. Then you get to your Lock Screen. Now with iOS 16 you can do a lot more than just this basic look. To start customizing just tap and hold and you'll see the Lock Screen shrink and you'll notice another Lock Screen appear to the right. You can scroll over and see different Lock Screens that you may already have setup. The last one is a plus button for adding a new one. You could actually add a new one anywhere with the plus button at the bottom right. There's also a customize button here at the bottom to customize the current one. When you want to choose one you simply tap in the middle of it and it will enlarge and become the current Lock Screen. 
Let's go and add a new one. To customize it I use the plus button down here and you're at this Add New Wallpaper screen. There are two ways to navigate here. One is you could just use the things at the top. You can use these buttons to start a new Lock Screen using Photos, People, Photo Shuffle, Emoji, etc. You can also see these same things by just scrolling down. Let's start off with Photos. I can tap on the first one here to use a suggested photo. Then you can see here the photo is used in the background but I can select some options. First, I can Pinch to Crop. So in the middle of the screen I can pinch out to zoom in and only select a portion of the photo. I can also tap the bottom left here and choose a different photo. So I can view all the photos in my Library. I can do All here. I can do Featured. I can do People, Nature, Cities, and I can search. So let me choose a different one here. I'll choose this one, for instance, and you can see it replaces the photo there. So you really can use any photo in your Library. 
Then at the bottom you're going to see these dots and you can actually swipe left to right to go through the dots and you'll see you go from the regular natural look to black and white, duotone, and color wash. In addition to that you can get various options by tapping here. Depth Effect will appear but you can see it is grayed out. You can't use the Depth Effect with this photo. So what type of photo can use the Depth Effect? Well, you want to select one that has a subject in it. So I'm going to tap here and choose a different photo. Let's choose this one and notice here how the subject appears in front of the time. That's the Depth Effect. So I can tap here and see it's On and I can turn it Off if I want. Also you'll see more effects depending upon which of these you have selected. Let's go from Natural to Studio and now I can see I have Low Key and High Key. If I go to black and white the same thing. If I go to color Backdrop notice how I can change the background color so it's going to tint just the background. In Duotone I can style color that is used for Duotone and for Color Wash I can also change the style color and turn On and Off the Depth Effect there. 
Now in addition to suggested photos you can use Photo Shuffle. So this allows you to choose People, Nature photos, or City photos in your collection. You can choose the specific people to feature there and it is going to shuffle through them. You can set the frequency, hourly, daily, every time you lock or every time you tap the Lock Screen. You can use Feature Photos or select photos manually. So you can just select a bunch of different photos and have it cycle through those. Weather and Astronomy are a special set. So you can use the first one here that is Weather and it is going to create a background depending upon the current weather that you've got. Astronomy is going to give you this one here that shows the earth. But you can see there is various different ones here. If I go to the left there is a far away view of the earth. Closer. Then there is moon. There is moon detail and there is the solar system with an accurate position for each of the planets. 
For emoji you can select anyone of these samples here. So you can have several emoji featured. If you tap here then you can choose which emoji to have. So let's delete these and let's add, say, some like that. Then you can also swipe to choose the size of the grid. The small grid, medium grid, large grid, rings or spiral like that. You tap here to change the background color. So let's make a black background. Or maybe something like this but darker. You can also tap here and then change the color using all sorts of other color pickers. There's some special collections. So these are photos that Apple has and notice how it is using the Depth Effect there and you can turn that On or Off. So there are a few different ones here that you could choose from.
Then finally you've got Color. So you can choose different gradients here. You can see each of these gradients featured here in these examples. But you can also just choose one and go between vibrant tone, deep, vapor, bright, or just a solid color. With anyone of these you can tap the color at the bottom left to change the color and make it any color you want. So let's use this as an example here to further customize things because you have all these boxes here. The biggest box, of course, is the Time. If you tap that you can now customize the font. So you can change the font. You can also change the color that is displayed for the time there. For this line here at the top it's a little widget and you can choose these custom widgets that will fit in that spot. So I could just use the date here. But I could also do, say, a calendar event. I could do the current temperature. I could do another type of clock. Something from the Fitness App, Reminders App, Stocks and you can customize the stocks. I can tap on it here and I can pick which stock I want to show. There are various different weather ones. 
Then you have this section here Add Widgets. You basically have four boxes here and you could fit four square widgets in that space or two wide widgets or a combination of wide and small widgets anyway you want. Tap to Add. So I can add three like that. You can tap to drag them around like that. You can tap the Minus button to get rid of some to make room for others. In addition to the ones at the top you also have various apps here. Here's a Clock App has one. The Home App has one. There's News, Reminders, Stocks, Weather and you could swipe through the different widgets and add one. So you can have three widgets like that. Then that is customized for this Home Screen. When you have the Home Screen like you want you tap Add and then you can set it as a pair. So you've got the Lock Screen there but you could use that background also for your Home Screen. 
So let's set it as a pair. So now when I'm using this Lock Screen and I swipe up on the Home Bar there you could see now my Home Screen has a background to match. It's easy to switch between these. So you can setup several that you like and then easily swap between them. You can even setup several that look very similar, like for instance you could do something like this with just slightly different widgets for each one. In addition to having photos that can rotate and change you also can have the entire Lock Screen change at a regular basis using Settings and then going to Focus. In Focus you could setup a different Focus mode. So here, say, for my Focus Mode called Evening I could customize the screens here. So I can choose a Lock Screen to appear in the evening and you can see this Focus Mode is set to go on from 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. So I could have a different Lock Screen in the evening than I have during the day. I could set a whole bunch of different Focus Modes for different times of the day using different Lock Screens. They don't have to be vastly different either. So, for instance, your evening Lock Screen can have slightly different widgets than your daytime Lock Screen and they both can use the same background.
Now I know it looks like there's a ton of options. What you really need to do is play around with it. Figure out what you like. Remember it's easy to change them. So find something you kind of like and then switch to that as your Lock Screen and then maybe after a day or two try customizing it further or a completely new Lock Screen. It's not the kind of thing where you decide and now you're stuck with it. You can change it as much as you want. I'm looking forward to using these. I hope you are too. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 11 Responses to “Customizing Your iPhone Lock Screen In iOS 16”

andrea merrifield

2 years ago

I can find black and white, color...but not studio effect. Is it only with certain types of photos? I've tried a few...thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

Andrea: That is a mode for Portrait photos.

Debra Williams

I don't have "suggested photos" listed as options.

Debra: This may have changed during the final release of iOS 16. Either way, you can still find any photo in your Library.

rhett

That focus really messed up my phone and home screen. Sorted it out eventually by turning focus off. What a nightmare lol.

Barbara

Hi Gary, I can't see the green dot on the globe in 'Astronomy' on my phone like I can see on yours.
Thanks

Barbara: In Settings, go to Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then check to see if you have allowed "Astronomy" access.

Phyllis Steele

I don't want my home screen to be the same as my lock screen, but I can't figure out how to do it, or maybe they have to be the same.

Phyllis: You do that at the end of the process. Around 7:30 here. You click Customize Home Screen at the bottom.

Nola

Is there a way to add a Lock Screen message such as "If found, Call xxx-xxx-xxxx" on the iPhone Lock Screen? I know it can be done on a Mac.

Nola: Two ways. First, fill out your emergency medical info in the Health app so that when someone finds your phone they can tap Emergency after failing to login, and then Medical ID and then see your emergency contact info. Second, when you lose your iPhone and set it to "lost" with Find My Mac you can put a message at that point. See https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/mark-a-device-as-lost-iph7cc193cfc/ios

Comments Closed.

Customizing Your iPhone Lock Screen In iOS 16

Comments: 11 Responses to “Customizing Your iPhone Lock Screen In iOS 16”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information