Technology

How to Add Custom Icons and Widgets to Your iPhone Home Screen

Published

3 years ago

August 6, 2022

How to Add Custom Icons and Widgets to Your iPhone Home Screen

Among the finest methods to personalize your iPhone is so as to add customized icons and tiles of varied styles and sizes for apps, widgets, and folders, wherever on your property screens. You too can swap in pictures you select and design instead of normal icons. This function has been out there since iOS 14, and within the upcoming iOS 16, you can make your custom-made house display change routinely primarily based in your Focus mode, in addition to customise the lock display.

For example of how far you’ll be able to go together with icon customization, one person on Twitter used MS Paint(Opens in a brand new window) to supply amusingly amateur-looking icons. The key right here is the Shortcuts app. Learn on to learn how to create a singular iOS house screens with customized icons and widgets.

Learn how to Create Customized Icons for Your iPhone

Open the Shortcuts app(Opens in a brand new window) in your iPhone and faucet the plus signal (+) within the higher proper nook of the display, which takes you to the New Shortcut web page.

Select Add Motion.

(Credit score: PCMag)

Faucet on the Scripting icon. (When you’re tempted to click on on Apps, you may solely see actions created by the app maker, akin to beginning a tweet, relatively than simply opening the app.)

Choose Open App, then choose the three-dot menu icon on the prime proper to point out Particulars.

Select Add to Residence Display screen. Faucet the decrease, smaller icon subsequent to the identify of your new shortcut. The default identify is New Shortcut; faucet the circled X to rename it.

Making a shortcut in iOS

(Credit score: PCMag)

Right here we get to the meat of the tip: The mini Edit Icon menu enables you to select a file, a photograph out of your digital camera roll, or snap an image with the iPhone’s digital camera to exchange the icon.

Faucet Add to Residence Display screen and choose the icon subsequent to your shortcut beneath Residence Display screen Identify and Icon.

Within the pop-up window that seems, choose File, Photograph, or Take Photograph. You’ll be able to crop a picture to customise what is going to present, however fortunately, the picture needn’t be sq. or a particular dimension.

Creating a custom app icon in ios

(Credit score: PCMag)

Faucet Add > Finished.

You’ll be able to see my new icons for Acrobat and AccuWeather. I used Home windows 10’s Paint 3D to create the mock Acrobat icon.

Editing icons in iOS

(Credit score: PCMag)

Observe that whereas it is enjoyable to create customized icons, there are drawbacks. For one, whenever you faucet the customized icon to open the app, you do not go on to the app. As an alternative, the motion first opens the Shortcuts app, which then shunts you to the app you need.

Advisable by Our Editors

Additionally, you lose any long-press menu choices the official icon offers. For instance, the WhatsApp icon gives beginning a chat or taking an image on an extended faucet. The one choices you get whenever you long-press a customized icon are to delete it (it is referred to as a Bookmark on this menu relatively than an App) or edit the house web page.

Customized icons are enjoyable, however I am much more excited by widgets on the house screens. Including a widget to a house web page is very simple.

Lengthy-tap on the house web page, then faucet the plus signal (+) button on the prime—it is on the left on some iPhone fashions and the suitable for others.

Choose the widget you need. You’ll be able to then scroll by no matter dimension and design selections can be found by swiping to the suitable.

Adding widgets to an iPhone home screen

(Credit score: PCMag)

To choose, press the large blue Add Widget bar alongside the underside of the display. You will have to permit privateness info the app widget requires. That is it! Take pleasure in your new widget.

For extra on iOS customization and different tweaks, learn Hidden iPhone Suggestions and Methods to Make You an iOS Professional.

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Technology

This weekend is your last chance to get a month of Disney Plus starting at $9.99

Published

8 hours ago

October 19, 2025

Press Room

This weekend is your last chance to get a month of Disney Plus starting at .99

From Apple TV Plus to Peacock, a number of streaming services have recently increased their pricing — and Disney Plus is no exception. Starting on Tuesday, October 21st, the standalone plan with ads will jump from $9.99 to $11.99 a month, while the ad-free Premium tier will increase by $3 to $18.99 a month. The ad-free annual plan is also going up by $30, at which point it will cost $189.99 a year. Ouch.

Fortunately, though, there’s still time to lock in the lower rates. If you subscribe to a year of Disney Plus Premium before October 21st, you’ll pay $159.99 for a full year before the price hike goes into effect. The same goes for the monthly plans; if you subscribe now, you’ll only pay $15.99 a month for the ad-free plan or $9.99 a month for the ad-supported tier. After your first billing cycle, though, the new monthly and annual prices will apply automatically, so be sure to set yourself a reminder and mark your calendars if you don’t want to renew.

Aside from ads, the main difference between the two tiers is that the step-up Premium plan lets you download content for offline viewing and supports Dolby Atmos audio with select content. Otherwise, both provide access to the same catalog of movies and TV shows, including content from Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, National Geographic, and Marvel. That means, no matter which one you sign up for, you’ll be able to stream upcoming documentaries from both James Cameron and Taylor Swift, as well as Deadpool & Wolverine, the second season of Andor, and newer, kid-friendly favorites like Lilo & Stitch.

Technology

Tesla’s self-driving cars under fire again

Published

9 hours ago

October 19, 2025

Press Room

Tesla’s self-driving cars under fire again

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The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a new investigation into 2.88 million Tesla vehicles running “Full Self-Driving” (FSD). Officials say the system may be breaking traffic laws, and worse, causing accidents. According to Reuters, 58 reports describe Teslas blowing through red lights, drifting into the wrong lanes and even crashing at intersections. Fourteen of those cases involved actual crashes, and 23 caused injuries.

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Red lights, train tracks and trouble ahead

In one striking pattern, six Tesla vehicles reportedly ran red lights before colliding with other cars. One driver in Houston complained that FSD “is not recognizing traffic signals,” saying the car stopped at green lights but ran through reds. The driver even said Tesla had seen the issue firsthand during a test drive, but refused to fix it. The agency is also reviewing new reports that some Teslas using FSD failed to handle railroad crossings safely, with one case involving a near-collision with an oncoming train.

WILL AUTONOMOUS TRUCKS REPLACE DRIVERS BY 2027?

Tesla faces new federal probe into crashes linked to Full Self-Driving mode. (Tesla)

Mounting legal and safety scrutiny

This is far from Tesla’s first brush with regulators. The company is already facing several investigations tied to both its Autopilot and FSD systems. In one high-profile case, a California jury ordered Tesla to pay $329 million after an Autopilot-related crash killed a woman. Another investigation is looking into Tesla’s limited Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, where passengers reported erratic driving and speeding — even with human safety drivers onboard. Meanwhile, Tesla is still fighting a false advertising lawsuit from California’s DMV. Regulators say calling the software “Full Self-Driving” is misleading, since it requires constant driver supervision. Tesla recently changed the name to “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” to reflect that reality.

Regulators say more crashes may come

Tesla’s latest FSD software update arrived just days before the investigation began. But the NHTSA says the system has already “induced vehicle behavior that violated traffic safety laws.” This investigation, now in its early stages, could lead to a recall if the agency finds that Tesla’s self-driving software poses a safety risk.

LUCID JOINS TESLA AND GM WITH HANDS-FREE HIGHWAY DRIVING

A man using Tesla's full self driving feature on a road

Regulators say some Teslas ran red lights and ignored traffic signals. (Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

What this means for you

If you drive a Tesla with FSD enabled, stay alert. The system isn’t fully autonomous, no matter what the name suggests. You should:

Keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times.
Manually override the system when approaching intersections, crosswalks or railroad tracks.
Check for Tesla software updates regularly — they may include critical safety fixes.
Report any unsafe FSD behavior to NHTSA.

For everyone else, this investigation is a reminder that “self-driving” still means supervised driving.

Robotaxi tests raise fresh safety questions for Tesla’s self-driving cars. (AP)

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Kurt’s key takeaways

Tesla’s dream of a fully autonomous future keeps hitting speed bumps. With safety regulators circling and lawsuits piling up, the company’s next moves will shape public trust in AI-driven transportation. Still, the push toward automation isn’t slowing down; it’s just under heavier watch.

How much control would you give an AI behind the wheel? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

TiVo won the court battles, but lost the TV war

Published

1 day ago

October 18, 2025

Press Room

TiVo won the court battles, but lost the TV war

In the 2000s, TiVo reached heights few companies ever achieve. Like Google and Xerox, its name became a verb. People had to “TiVo” the new episode of Battlestar Galactica or game 4 of the Red Sox vs. Cardinals, not “record” it. While it didn’t invent the DVR, TiVo popularized it and many of the features we would eventually take for granted, like the ability to pause or rewind live TV, and watch one program while recording another.

Those features were covered in the now infamous US Patent 6,233,389 — better known as the Time Warp patent. TiVo spent a good chunk of the 2000s and early 2010s defending its intellectual property through a series of high-profile lawsuits, most notably against EchoStar. That particular saga lasted for the better part of a decade, with TiVo originally filing the suit in January of 2004 and the final $500 million settlement being awarded in April of 2011.

But TiVo spent much of its prime years locked in court battles with major players in the television and digital video space. Motorola, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Dish Network, Cisco, and Verizon all found themselves on the receiving end of a patent infringement lawsuit from TiVo. TiVo came out victorious in almost every single one. The US Patent Office even agreed to reexamine the patent on two separate occasions and reaffirmed its claims.

If the company had been focused on revenue sources outside the courtroom, it could have been at the forefront of the smart TV rollout.

Licensing its technology became the primary way TiVo made money as it entered the 2010s. The problem was, by then, the writing was on the wall. Netflix launched its streaming service in January 2007. Hulu entered beta later that year and launched publicly in March of 2008. That year also marked the launch of Roku’s first device and the earliest models of modern smart TVs, like the Samsung PAVV Bordeaux TV 750.

DVRs became standard issue with most cable TV packages. Sure, TiVo’s interface was slicker, and it had advanced features, such as remotely scheduling recordings via TiVo Central Online or transferring them to a computer with TiVoToGo. But spending $200 or more on a separate DVR in 2008 (at least if you wanted HD tuners), plus an additional subscription cost on top of your cable bill, was an increasingly hard sell when Time Warner would give you a DVR that was good enough.

Roku was offering simple-to-use streaming set-top boxes at impulse purchase prices — as low as $49.99 by 2011. Google pushed prices even lower with the Chromecast in 2013. Smart TV operating systems were becoming increasingly capable. TiVo was adding support for Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services, but it seemed to constantly be playing catch-up as it entered the new decade.

TiVo’s hardware had stagnated. It was wasting time on features like the ability to order Domino’s from your TV. And its biggest money maker — a patent focused on manipulating broadcast television — was increasingly becoming obsolete as cord-cutting began to grow in popularity.

According to nScreenMedia traditional pay TV subscriptions peaked in the US in 2010 at around 103 million, or roughly 89 percent of households. In 2025, that number is down to just 49.6 million, or 37.6 percent of households. The most popular streaming services are now easily outpacing linear pay TV as they copy some of its moves by leaning into live content anchored by sports and other spectacles that draw eyeballs to now-unskippable ads. At the end of 2024, Netflix had 89.6 million subscribers and Disney Plus 56.8 million in the US and Canada. (The companies report subscriptions by region only, not country.) As TiVo continued to battle companies like Google and Time Warner in court, its customer base was drying up.

TiVo was eventually purchased by Rovi, a company whose primary business is hoarding patents and either licensing them to other companies or suing companies in order to force them to license their technology. This, sadly, was to be TiVo’s fate going forward. When it was purchased by tech licensing firm Xperi in 2020, the press release announcing the merger didn’t tout best-in-class hardware or innovative set-top box software. Instead, it bragged about having “one of the industry’s largest and most diverse intellectual property (IP) licensing platforms.”

TiVo’s ill-fated Android TV dongle.

Image: TiVo

After its merger with Xperi, TiVo wouldn’t launch another set-top box. Its last model, the TiVo Edge, was released in 2019. And this month, the company confirmed it had quietly sold the last of its stock on September 30th and would be exiting the hardware business.

TiVo says it plans to focus on its fledgling smart TV OS — a move that’s probably 15 years too late. Perhaps if the company had been focused on revenue sources outside the courtroom, it could have been at the forefront of the smart TV rollout. Maybe it could have developed its own streaming-first device that was more than a lazy (and late) reskin of Android TV. TiVo’s UI and iconic peanut remote were beloved. Its brand was a household name. But, rather than build a platform to power the next generation of televisions, it seemed focused on milking every dollar out of companies clearly heading towards obsolescence.

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