There’s a major overhaul to Apple’s HomeKit Home app with iOS 16 this fall. I recently previewed all the new features coming to the smart home platform, but wanted to do a quick tutorial on one of my favorite new features: personalization.

In the new Home app, the options for customizing the on-screen display of your smart home devices, rooms, and favorites are vastly improved. You can Rearrange your home view to put your most-used rooms at the top or designate your favorites or camera feeds to be the first thing you see when you open the app.

You can also rearrange individual buttons on your devices, such as lights, door locks, and blinds, much like arranging apps on an iPhone home screen. This means that your most used smart lights or door lock can be easier to use so that your thumb can press quickly and you can bring two related items closer together.

New Icons allow you to identify a light by its type (table lamp or ceiling light, for example) or quickly differentiate it from other devices such as lampshades and smart plugs. Scenes – which can set multiple devices to change state at the same time – now have more icons and the ability to choose a color for each scene. And finally, there are new wallpaper choices to give the app some personality.

You must be running iOS 16 to use the new Home app; the app is available on all Apple devices, including iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. It’s coming out this fall, but there’s a public beta you can download today if you can’t wait.

Here’s how to start customizing your Home app in iOS 16 on an iPhone.

Customize the home view screen

The Home view is the screen that opens when you first start the Home app. You can also access it by tapping the Home icon in the bottom menu bar. Home View is where all the controllable devices in your HomeKit home appear, categorized into rooms and favorites. There are also scene and camera groups here. You can now rearrange them to better suit the way you use the devices.

Rearrange the sections of your home view

• Open the Home app on your iPhone.
• Tap the three dots in the upper right corner to open the menu.
• Select Rearrange Sections.
• You will see a list of all rooms and groups (cameras/favorites/scenes) displayed on the home view.
• Tap and drag the three horizontal lines next to a room or group and drag your selection to the desired position on the home view.
• Hit Doand your home view will be rearranged.

Edit tiles in your home view

• Open the Home app on your iPhone.
• Tap the three dots in the upper right corner to open the menu.
• Select Change home view. (You can also long press any button/tile and select Change home view.)
• All tiles will go into “jiggle mode”.
• Drag any tile wherever you want on the screen. He must stay in his designated room.
• You can rearrange any tile on the home screen, including new top shortcut buttons, Scene tiles, and Camera tiles.

You can also resize any thumbnail in the home view if it is below the part.

• To do this, tap the tile when it is in jiggle mode.
• A resize arrow will appear in the upper right corner.
• Tap it to enlarge the tile and again to shrink it. There are two size options.

Hide a device from home view

If your home view is cluttered with a lot of devices that you rarely access in the app, you can hide them to keep your home view a bit tidier.

• Open the Home app on your iPhone.
• Long press on a device tile and select Remove from home view.
• The tile will disappear from the home view but will still appear in the individual room view.
• To bring it back to the home view, find it in the room view, long press and select Add to home view.

Customize icons in the Home app

Customizing the icons for your devices and scenes can make it easier to quickly find what you’re looking for. In the new Home app, there are now 15 options for lighting icons (down from 10 previously), while other categories have redesigned icons to help clarify whether the icon represents a ceiling fan or a fan. table, for example.

The biggest change in terms of icons is in scenes. There are now over 100 new icons, compared to just 12 in previous versions. You can choose a roaring fireplace, birthday cake, book, or ghost emoji to help sum up what your scene will bring to your home. Additionally, you can now assign one of 12 colors to your scene.

Change the icon for your light or other devices

• Open the Home app on your iPhone.
• Long press the device whose icon you want to change.
• Faucet Accessories details in the context menu.
• Press the Settings icon in the lower right corner (or swipe up from below).
• Tap the current icon.
• A menu of icons will appear.
• Select the new one.
• Faucet Do.

Change your scene icon

• Open the Home app on your iPhone.
• Long press the Scene button you want to edit.
• Tap the icon.
• A menu of icons and colors will appear.
• Select the icon and color you like.
• Faucet Do.