Android has always had a reputation as the mobile OS for customizability. If you like fiddling with your phone, go that way. If you prefer a more curated experience, go with Apple. That said, the latter has made iOS easier to customize over the years, and it just so happens that iOS 18 introduces a whole bunch of new ways to choose how your iPhone looks and works. In some ways, Apple’s iPhone has never felt more like Android.

Apple has delved into home screen personalization over the years: with iOS 14, for example, users went wild designing their own app icons to give their home screens a personal touch.

But iOS 18 brings some new changes that we’ve never had before on iPhone. For the first time, you can now place your app icons wherever you want. Until now, Apple forced you to follow a strict grid pattern that starts in the top-left corner of the home screen unless you used clever workarounds to push your apps where you wanted them. Now, you can simply choose to place app icons wherever you want them.

The first time you place an app on a new home screen page, it may snap to the top left corner. But from there, you drag the app to where you want it and release it. The app will still respect the grid, so you can’t play it literally anywhere. But you do have your choice of four random spaces per row, and as many rows as will fit on your home screen.