Apple says you can make an iPhone your own with all-new ways to personalize your Lock Screen in iOS 16. You can showcase favorite photos, customize font styles, and display a set of widgets to get info at a glance.
What is the Lock Screen?
The Lock Screen—which shows the current time and date, your most recent notifications, and a photo or any custom widgets you’ve added—appears when you turn on or wake iPhone. From the Lock Screen, you can see notifications, open Camera and Control Center, get information from your favorite apps at a glance, and more.
How to access features, info
You can access useful features and information from the Lock Screen, even while iPhone is locked. From the Lock Screen, youdo any of the following:
- Open Camera: Swipe left. On supported models, you can touch and hold the camera icon, then lift your finger.
- Open Control Center: Swipe down from the top-right corner (on an iPhone with Face ID) or swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen (on other iPhone models).
- See earlier notifications: Swipe up from the center.
- View widgets: Swipe right.
Show notification previews
To show notificiation previews in the Lock Screen:
- Go to Settings > Notifications.
- Tap Show Previews, then tap Always.
- Choose how you want notifications displayed on the Lock Screen:
- View just the number of notifications: Select Count.
- View the notifications grouped into stacks by app: Select Stack.
- View the notifications in a list: Select List.
- You can pinch the notifications on the Lock Screen to change the layout.
Notification previews can include text from Messages, lines from Mail messages, and details about Calendar invitations
How to customize your Lock Screen
To begin customizing your Lock Screen, touch and hold the Lock Screen, then tap Customize or tap the “+” sign to create a new Lock Screen.
When it comes to choosing new wallpapers, you can choose from the categories of Photos, People, Photo Shuffle, Emoji, Weather, Astronomy, or Color. Photo Shuffle provides a dynamic set of photos that shuffle throughout the day.
Weather and Astronomy Lock Screen offers live weather and astronomical conditions for your current location. Emoji and Color Lock Screens are …. well, that’s obvious.
You can match your Lock Screen to a “moment.” Connect a Focus — such as Work or Personal — to a Lock Screen so that the look of your iPhone matches what you’re doing. From the Lock Screen Gallery, tap Focus and choose the one you want.
You can have several Lock Screen setups and either switch between them manually (long press to get to this interface and then swipe left and right) or automatically (by assigning Lock Screens to specific Focus modes). To do so manually, long press your Lock Screen, then swipe left or right. To do so automatically, assign, as mentioned before, specific Focus modes to a Lock Screen.
You can also edit the current Lock Screen in the Settings app, under Wallpaper.
How to delete a Lock Screen
To delete a Lock Screen, long press to enter the lock screen selection mode, swipe to the lock screen you want to remove, and long press on it. Select Delete Wallpaper from the bottom of the screen.
