Customise & Personalise Your Phone

[Chris_K]

Hey guys,

As some of you know I'm a big Android fan, and one of the reasons is because of the customisation and personlisation options it gives me. Just because your phone comes with pre-set icons, widgets and layouts doesn't mean it needs to stay that way. Time to break the chains and make your device your own!

Note: Although I'll focus primarily on Android, I'm sure there will be similar ways to bling your iOS / Blackberry / Windows Phone device - i'll leave that to you guys, feel free to use this same thread.

Launchers
A launcher for Android is basically the front of a shop display. Your Android device probably came with a built-in one in the form of TouchWiz (Samsung), Sense (HTC), Xperia Home (Sony) etc. While some of these do the job, 3rd party ones can offer a tonne more options to get your home screen looking just how you want it!

Some 3rd party launchers: Nova, Apex, Go Launcher, Buzz

Icons
Bored of your icon designs? It's so easy to change them on Android and you'll find literally thousands of icon packs on the Google Play store. Many are free, and most paid ones (generally a bit more work goes into them and usually from an experienced designer) are under £1. If you've downloaded a pack of icons on your computer, copy them to your phone and you can usually change the icons manually with most 3rd party launchers.

Widgets
Widgets can really bring your homescreen alive - not only visually, but functionally too. There's widgets to display weather, times & dates, calendar entries, new emails. And if you're the creative type, start making your own widgets with the likes of Zooper, UCCW, Minimalistic Text etc.

To give you some idea and perhaps maybe even some inspiration, here's my home screen right now:


- I like a minimal style, for most of my wallpaper to be unobstructed, and yet still offer some functionality. The 'replacement status bar' is actually a widget I built from scratch in Zooper... It's very easy to use, no coding knowledge is needed, and there's tonnes of tutorials out there to help you get started.

So, lets see your homescreens... Let's share tips/tricks on getting the most and how to personalise and customise your phone to its fullest!

[blissgirl]

Agreed @Cleoriff I would post mine but don't know how to

[Cleoriff]

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@blissgirl wrote:
Agreed @Cleoriff I would post mine but don't know how to

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How I do it is by swiping right to left take a screenshot ....uploading that to messenger and copying it from there then pasting here. I know there are far quicker ways ...but I do what works for me..:smileywink:

[blissgirl]

will try that

[Toby]

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Cleoriff wrote:

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Well that looks like the night of the living dead @Toby 

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Batman and his villains  

[Anonymous]

On my Windows Lumia 640 lte I have the tiles I want all over the screen more-or-less, I can scroll them up / down,  with the background wallpaper being a photo of a pink rose in my sunny att yard ... I'm happy with that :womanhappy:

[Anonymous]

That sounds really artistic @WispaRed7! What made you choose that screen?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

That sounds really artistic @Anonymous! What made you choose that screen?

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thank you @Anonymous

I consider myself a bit 'arty farty' & I wanted a photo I'd taken personal to me to be my phone wallpaper ... since having my smartphone late May I've not taken many pics, but this rose is old & doesn't always flower, probably because it's in a tub - I don't have a garden, but do have a yard - the bud on it is crimson & then it opens into pink / peach colour ... on the pic is foliage, a full flowering rose & a rosebud  allus been just a 'happy snapper'