I’ll Never Use My iPhone the Same Way Again... Here’s Why

0:00 Now, iOS has about a ton of new features, and after using it for a nice bit of time, I've actually figured out how to set things up in a way that actually works for me. For me, that means not just making my phone look good, but making it useful. I've really focused on how I use my phone dayto-day, limiting distractions, and leaning into the tools that help me stay productive. And in the day, I want my phone to be helpful and not a burden. Now, with iOS, Apple gave us way more control over how things look and work. from your lock screen and home screen to the control center and beyond. There are just so many ways to make your iPhone feel like yours. So, I finally decided to dive deep, test a bunch of setups, and figure out what felt the most intentional for me. And I figured, why not share it? If you're like me and want to get the most out of your phone, or maybe you're new to iPhone and just want to see what's possible with iOS 18, stick around. I think you'll find something useful here.

0:46 What works for me might not work for you, but I'm hoping this video gives you a few ideas or starting points to build a set that works for you. With that said, let's kick things off with some of the basic visual changes in iOS 18 and how I customize my lock screen. All right, the first thing I wanted to do with my phone was really dive into customizing the look of everything because yeah, I want my phone to look clean and aesthetic, but also a lot of these visual changes actually tie into how I use my phone functionally. You can just hold down to customize it. And now in iOS 18, you can pretty much tweak everything. I can change the wallpaper. And while some of the new defaults actually look pretty nice, I'm using one from a friend of mine, Alien Setups, on Instagram. He makes some fire wallpapers, and this one just fits the vibe I was going for. Next, I'll tap the clock and tweak the font and wake. Just a subtle way to make the lock screen feel a little more personal. Then, I'll

1:32 hit the widgets icon and add my usual lineup, weather, battery, and email. These are the things I want quick access to without needing to unlock the phone. Now, here's something new with the iOS 18. You can fully customize the lock screen action buttons in the bottom corners. So, for me, I swapped out the flashlight for solid mode. And yes, I know we already have a dedicated button for that, but I actually reassigned that to Shazam music recognition. I'm just tired of scrambling to open the app before the song I want to know ends. On the other side, I replaced the default camera app with the Blackmagic camera app, which I use for more cinematic style videos. Since I've got the iPhone 16 Pro, it just makes sense to take full advantage of the camera hardware. And the Blackmagic app gives me a lot more control. But honestly, these corner buttons can be customized for a bunch of things like accessibility tools or quick

2:17 actions. If you're traveling, for example, you can swap in live translate instead of the flashlight. It's a small tweak, but it really makes the phone feel more tailored to you. Now, moving over to the home screen. Whether you've already laid things out or you're starting fresh, this is where things can get really intentional. Personally, I structure my pages around different focus modes. So, I've got a main page, a fitness page, and one for activity. I also utilize the widget page for all my stacks. To plan out what apps I want on each screen, I use a free form app. It's already built into iOS, but if that feels a little extra, Notion works just as well to drop things down and plan it out. Once I figured out what I want on each page, I go back to the home screen, hold down to enter edit mode, and remove any stock apps I don't use. All you got to do after that is just tap the minus icon and hit remove from home screen. And then I start dragging in the apps I planned out for my main page. And yeah,

3:04 iOS 18 finally let you place icons anywhere on the screen. So, I can drag them to the bottom for easier reach, or group apps together by holding one and tabbing onto the others to move them all at once. But now, here's something that's always bugged me. Some appcons being light, others dark. I wanted a more uniform look, and plus I like the dark aesthetic. So, while I'm in edit mode, I tap the top left corner, go to customize, and now I can choose between light, dark, or tinted icons. The tinted ones can look cool depending on your wallpaper, but for me, dark mode all day. I also like to use the large icon setting, which hides the app names for a cleaner aesthetic. On my fitness screen, I'm adding a couple of widgets. The large activity rings widget and one for an app I use called Heavy. It tracks all my workouts, exercises, sets, and even my workout history. It's super helpful and way more detailed than Apple's

3:50 fitness app alone. For my productivity screen, I've added widgets for calendar and an app called To-Doist. This helps me keep things front and center when I need to stay on top of all my tasks. Then on my main screen, I'll read add some of the same widgets, activity rings, weather, and a battery widget that shows the charge level of all my Apple accessories because, let's be real, I'm super terrible at keeping track of all the battery power of all my devices. Now that I've got all my home screen layout set up, I'm going to head into settings and tap on focus. Apple actually gives us a few default focus modes that you can either use as is or customize. And of course, you can also create your own from scratch. Let's start by setting up the fitness focus mode. So, I'll tap the plus icon. And right away, you'll see Apple already has a preset for fitness. I'll tap that, then hit customize focus. Now, by default, Apple has this set up to

4:36 trigger automatically when you start a workout, which is super useful. But what I'm really interested in is customize the home screen page that's linked to this focus mode. Right above the schedule section, you'll see an option to set a custom home screen and lock screen. I'm just going to choose the home screen for now. So, I'll tap choose and select the page I set up earlier with my fitness apps and widgets. Now, that's it for fitness focus mode. Now, I'll go ahead and set the rest of my focus modes. But this time, instead of using Apple's presets, I'm going to create a custom focus mode. That way, I can better organize everything and give each one a unique name, icon, and color. So, let's create one for productivity. I'll tap custom, name it productivity, and choose a clean looking icon and color that matches the vibe. Then, I'll hit customize. And just like before, I'll select the home screen page I already built out for productivity. Now, while I'm in this mode, I want to set up notification preferences. Sometimes it's

5:23 just way too easy to get distracted by constant alerts. So, this is where focus really shines. I can silence all notifications, but still allow a select few people or apps to come through. For example, I want to make sure I still get notifications from my girlfriend. So, I'll tap people, hit the plus icon, and add it to the list. That way, even when everything else is muted, any messages or calls from her will still show up. You can also flip this around where everything is allowed except for specific people or apps. Totally up to how you want to structure your focus. Another cool feature is setting schedules for each focus mode. Just scroll down to the set schedule section, and you can add triggers based on time, location, or even when opening a specific app. So, if you wanted to go into productivity mode every weekday from like 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., you can fully automate that here. And now that I've got my focus mode set up and linked to the right home screen, let's

6:10 go back to the main screen. Now, I'll swipe down and check out the redesign control center, which got a big update in the iOS 18. Just like the home screen, the control center in iOS 18 is now fully customizable. You can hold down on any of the tiles to move things around, rearrange them however you like, and even add or remove controls based on what you actually use. But before we dive into that, I want to quickly show you something with focus modes. When I switch between modes like fitness or productivity, you'll see the home screen layout actually changes with it, just like we set up earlier. And this looks super clean. But there's one issue. When I turn focus mode off and go back to my main page, all of the home screen pages we made for each mode still show up. And personally, I don't want that. I want the main screen to stay minimal and only show the main screen. So, here's how I fix that. I'll long press anywhere on

6:56 the home screen to enter edit mode and then tap the page dots at the bottom of the screen. This brings up all my pages. And from here, I'll uncheck the ones I don't want to show on default mode. Once I hit done, you'll see only my main screen shows up when no focus mode is active. This keeps my phone clutter-free and a lot more intentional. Now, on the far left of all my home screens, there's a widget page. And honestly, I feel like a lot of people forget about this section, but for me, it's kind of become a command center. I set it up in a way that really supports how I use my phone dayto-day. So, up in the top left corner, I've got what I call my stats corner. It's a stack of widgets that gives me all the health related stuff I care about at a glance, like my activity, sleep, and whether my devices are charged. And this is actually one of the few spots where I keep Smart Rotate on. That way, if something's running low on battery, like my AirPods or Apple Watch, it'll automatically bring that to

7:41 the front without me having to swipe around. Over on the top right, I built what I call my listening stack. This is where I keep my quick access to things like YouTube music and Audible. Lately, I've been listening to this audiobook called Breathe Like a Warrior, which has been super eye opening. It's something I started paying more attention to, how important breathing actually is, especially during work or even just day-to-day life. The third widget in the stack is a shortcut that I made for my listening experience. With this shortcut, I'm able to easily change where I would like music or whatever I'm listening to come out of, whether it's for my phone, my guest speakers, or Mac Studio. This shortcut makes my listening experience way easier to direct. Right under that, I've got my Gmail widget. It's set up specifically for the inbox I use for social media and content stuff. So, whenever a collab invite comes through or a brand reaches out, I can catch it right away without digging through all my emails. And then the rest of the space down here is reserved for

8:28 content. I've added my notion widget, and this one's showing all of my favorites. basically a quick view of all the ideas I save for YouTube, Instagram, and Tik Tok. So, if I think of something while I'm out or I need to look at what's next in my content list, it's all right there. This whole page has honestly become one of the most useful parts of my setup. And because it's always just a swipe away, it makes everything I need feel super accessful without having to bounce through a bunch of different apps. So, yeah, back to the control center. With this new update, you can now completely customize it. And I mean fully rebuild it to fit exactly how you use your phone. The thing is, if you just leave it as it is with the default layout, there's a bunch of stuff that either feels redundant or straight up useless. So, what I'm going to do here is wipe the entire thing clean and rebuild it from the ground up. So, you can see how I've customized to match my own workflow. First, I'll swipe down and tap the little plus sign in the top left

9:14 corner. That's what puts you into edit mode. Then, I'm going to go ahead and hit the minus sign on every single control in here. I want a completely blank canvas to work with. Now, when it comes to adding controls back in, all you need to do is tap add a control at the bottom. We'll start with the connectivity section. Most of you probably have that bundled menu that includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and airplane mode allin-one, but personally, I'm not a fan of that setup. The problem is you can't long press those buttons directly. You have to first open the menu, then long press, which adds that extra step that just slow things down. So instead, I just add those four controls individually. Airplane mode, cellular data, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, each in their own slot. This way, I can quickly tap or long press them without need to dig into a submen. And if you're having a hard time finding them, don't worry. Just use a search bar at the top.

9:59 Type what you're looking for and it'll pop right up. Next to that, I'm adding a small now playing widget. I don't need this one to be huge. I just want to see what's playing, pause, or skip if I need to. But if you want a bigger version, you can resize it to your liking. Right underneath my connectivity buttons, I've got orientation lock, silent mode, and my focus modes. These are the things I'm switching between all the time, so having them easily accessible is key for me. And of course, you've got to have the classic brightness and volume sliders right next to all that. Can't go without those. Now, with the rest of the space, especially the bottom eight slots, I like to fill these in with the controls that I personally use the most. So, for me, that includes the camera, flashlight, calculator, and timer. I also add low power mode, screen recording, and background sounds, which I use when I need to focus or block out noise. And finally, I've added a shortcut that opens up YouTube Studio so

10:45 I can quickly jump in and obsess over how my latest video is performing. And you'll probably notice that I've kept most of these functions within the bottom half of the control center. That's completely intentional. I like to have everything within reach so I can access it one-handed. But if your son uses more shortcuts or just wants quick access to a wider range of tools, feel free to fill out the rest of the grid with whatever works for you. At the end of the day, this whole redesign is about giving you control over what matters most and making sure the control center actually supports the way you use your phone, not the other way around. So yeah, that's pretty much how I've gotten everything set up on my iPhone right now. From the home screen layouts and focus modes to widgets and a fully customized control center. And honestly, it's made a huge difference in how I use my phone dayto-day. Everything feels cleaner, more intentional, and just way more personal to how I actually live and work. Apple's finally giving us more

11:31 freedom to make the iPhone feel like our iPhone, not just some one-sizefits-all layout. If you've been meaning to organize your phone or cut down distractions, I highly recommend diving into these features. It takes a little bit of time to set everything up, but once it's done, you'll wonder how you ever use your phone without it. If you found this helpful or if it inspired you to switch up your own setup, let me know in the comments. I'd love to hear how you guys are personalizing your iPhones, too. And if you haven't already, don't forget to drop a like and subscribe. I got way more content coming around.