How to Customize Lock Screen in iPhone?

Android offers plenty of customizations compared to iOS and customizing lock screen was one such a feature. However, Apple is slowly making changes and now you can edit and customize lock screen in iPhone from iOS 16 onwards. Basically, you can use most of the home screen settings. We will explore the possibilities in detail in this article.

Understanding Lock Screen and Home Screen in iPhone

First, make sure to update your iOS to version 16 or later as older versions do not offer lock screen features. You can setup the followings:

• Create multiple lock screens
• Add different wallpapers for each screen
• Show your favorite widgets
• Pair lock and home screens to show same wallpaper or customize them independently

Lock screen and home screen works together in iPhone which may be confusing when you setup. Each lock screen is linked to its own home screens which means you will always have a set like below:

• Lock screen 1 + home screens set 1
• Lock screen 2 + home screens set 2
• Lock screen 3 + home screens set 3

Though it is possible to create multiple lock screens, you can use one at time. However, you can have multiple home screens and add different widgets on each screen while the background wallpaper remains same. This is the reason; it may be confusing when you setup and we used the word “set” for home screens. You can setup multiple lock and home screen combinations and choose them based on your mood or location.

Note: If you have iPhone 14 Pro / Pro Max or later models, then an additional Always On Display (AOD) mode is available. AOD is a dark screen shown when your phone is locked. You can enable the option under “Settings > Display & Brightness” section. Though the screen will show a clock and date, you can’t customize the AOD screen.

Adding New Lock Screens in iPhone

• Tap on your iPhone when it is in locked mode.
• Unlock it with your Face ID or passcode.
• Press and hold the lock screen to see additional features.
• For adding a new lock screen, tap on “Customize” button and then select “Add New” option. Otherwise, simply tap the + icon or swipe left to go to next screen and tap + icon.

• Select any of the suggested wallpaper for your screen and accept by tapping on “Add” button.

• You will see a prompt asking to confirm whether you want to use the same wallpaper for the home screen.
• Confirm using the same wallpaper by tapping on “Set as Wallpaper Pair” button.

• If you want to have different home screen wallpaper, then tap on “Customize Home Screen” option. You can select a photo from Photos app as a wallpaper or adjust colors/gradients of the current lock screen wallpaper.

Creating New Lock Screen from Settings

It is also possible to create a new lock screen, customize the widgets and wallpapers from Settings app.

• Go to Settings app and navigate to “Wallpaper” section.
• You will see the current wallpapers for both lock and home screens.
• Tap on “Customize” button below the wallpapers and select “Add New” to customize lock/home screen wallpapers.
• For creating a new lock screen, tap on “Add New Wallpaper” option to choose your wallpaper and the widgets. Confirm whether to keep the same lock screen for home screens or customize home screens wallpaper separately.
• The newly added screens will be set as you current display.

The difference here is that you can only customize or create the screen sets from Settings app. It is not possible to choose one of the previously created screens. For that you need to go to lock screen and select as explained in the above section.

Wallpaper Options

As mentioned, wallpaper options are different for lock and home screens. For lock screen, iPhone will show suggestions to make it easy for you. the automatic suggestions include the portrait pictures from Photos app and from other categories. However, you can also choose from one of the groups like – Photos, Photo Shuffle, Emoji, Weather, Astrology and Color. Each group will show additional options like you can choose up to 6 emoji from the keyboard to create a custom emoji wallpaper.

For the home screens, the best option is to pair the same lock screen wallpaper. Otherwise, you have limited options to choose a photo or adjust the colors/gradients of lock screen wallpaper.

Adding Widgets in Lock Screen

After selecting a wallpaper for your lock screen, tap on “Add Widgets” option. This will show a list of available widgets and tap on your favorite items to add in the screen. Unfortunately, you can only add a row of widgets and it is not possible to add too many widgets as you can do on home screens.

For the home screen widgets, you need to get into one of the home screens, tap and hold on empty area and add the widgets. As mentioned above, you can add widgets in each home screen and there are no restrictions on adding multiple widgets.

Deleting Lock Screens

If you have created too many lock screens, simply find the item you want to delete and move it up on the screen. You will see a trash icon and tap on it. iPhone will show a warning message that the wallpaper will be deleted from both lock and home screens. Confirm the deletion by tapping on “Delete This Wallpaper” button.

Final Words

Though you can customize the lock screen with widgets and add wallpapers, it may confuse users to combine with home screen. At this point, the above explained options are the default customizations available for iPhone from iOS 16. You can expect more to come from third-party developers to get the maximum benefits out of lock screen. We will also need to wait and see whether Apple will continue this lock and home screen confusion or keep things separate in future iOS versions.