Four Cool Ways to Customize Your Android Home Screen
iOS may be catching up in terms of customization, but if you want full pixel-by-pixel control over the look and feel of the software on your phone, Android still leads the way. You can change the look of your home screens in a variety of ways, some of which you may not have known about yet.
This is a complete breakdown of all the features available to you right now in the latest versions of Android for Pixel phones (Android 15) and Samsung phones (One UI 6.1.1). If you’re using a phone from another Android manufacturer, you should have similar options, although the menus and dialog boxes may differ.
Organize your apps
New apps will appear on the Home screen by default, but you can turn this feature off. To do this on Pixel phones, long-press on an empty part of the Home screen, then choose Home Settings > Add app icons to Home screen . On Samsung phones, open Settings and select Home Screen > Add New Apps to Home Screen .
On Pixel devices, you can add apps to the Home screen by long-pressing them in the app drawer and then dragging them to the Home screen—drag them to the far right to create a new Home screen. On Samsung phones, touch and hold an app in the app drawer, then select Add to Home .
Touch, hold, and drag any app shortcut on one of your Home screens to move it to a different location. To remove an app from the Home screen without deleting it, touch and drag it to the Uninstall button at the top (Pixel), or touch and hold it and select Uninstall (Samsung). To create folders on the Home screen, drag apps on top of each other; drag them again to return them to the home screen.
Each home screen has a grid, but you don’t have to install an app in every slot—you can leave gaps. You can also adjust the grid size: From Settings: Pixels, select Wallpaper & Style > Home Screen > App Grid , and on Samsung Galaxy devices, select Home Screen > Home Screen Grid .
Expand widgets
When you introduce widgets, you can really start getting creative with your home screen layouts. Widgets can be placed in multiple positions and often set to different sizes: the widgets available to you will depend on the apps you have installed and what the developers of those apps have made available.
On Pixel and Samsung phones, long-press on an empty part of the Home screen, then tap Widgets to see what’s on offer. Widgets are organized by app: To place a widget on your home screen, touch and hold it and drag it to the desired location. In some cases, you’ll need to customize the widget after you’ve placed it (for example, by choosing the label you want to appear in the Gmail widget).
Touch and hold a widget to drag it to a new position or resize it—handles will appear along the edges if the widget can be resized. Widgets can be removed from the Home screen the same way you can remove apps: touch and drag to remove (Pixel phones) or touch and hold then select Remove (Samsung phones).
If you’re using the Samsung One UI, you get an additional bonus widget feature: Stacks. As the name suggests, these are widgets placed in the same place that you can swipe between. To create a stack, touch and hold the widget, then select Create Stack . If you already have multiple widgets on top of each other, the option will change to Edit Stack .
Wallpaper and colors
Behind your apps and widgets is a wallpaper and color theme. On Pixel phones, open Settings, then Wallpaper & Style . From here, you can choose a background for your lock screen and home screen (tap More Wallpaper for more options). At the bottom you can also choose a color scheme – you’ll see some options to match the wallpaper you’ve chosen, but you can choose any colors you like.
The Wallpaper screen has a Themed Icons option, which will try to give your Home screen icons a tint that matches the Android wallpaper and colors you’ve chosen. It doesn’t always work perfectly—it’s marked as still in beta—but you can try changing the look and feel of the mobile operating system.
These screens look a little different if you’re using a Samsung Galaxy phone: it’s “Wallpaper & Style” again in the Settings menu, but you’ll need to tap “Change Wallpaper” to see more picture options and “Color Palette” to choose a color diagram. Just like on Pixel phones, you can choose colors to match your wallpaper or choose something else.
Samsung phones have a whole extra settings menu called Themes , where you can control combinations of wallpapers, colors, and icons (much like a Windows desktop theme). You can access a range of third-party themes, most of which you’ll have to pay for, that will apply background wallpapers, icon graphics, and color schemes to your phone’s interface.
More customization options
There are still more customization options you can use if you have an Android phone: for example, you can change the size of displayed text and other elements on the screen. To do this, from Settings, select Display and tap > Display Size & Text (Pixels) or Display > Font Size & Style (Samsung).
Making changes here will affect the text, widgets, and icons you see on your home screens. From these same display menus, you can also access your phone’s dark mode, which gives everything on the screen (including items on the home screen) a darker look—you can even schedule dark mode to turn on at specific times if you want. .
Additionally, there are third-party launchers that completely replace and change the look of your home screens, giving your phone a new look. Smart Launcher and Nova Launcher are two of the oldest and most popular Android launchers in the industry.
You can also switch between launchers on the Home screen quite easily: On Pixel phones, open Settings, then go to Apps > Default Apps > Home App . If you’re using a Samsung phone, go to Settings > Apps > Set default apps > Home app . Each individual launcher will also have its own set of options that can be accessed from these same screens.