How to Change Your Home Screen Icon Shapes in iOS 7 (Video)

One of the main complaints from iPhone users is that iOS 7, while a fairly substantial overhaul from iOS 6, just “looks the same.” Icon Masks is a great tweak that lets you customize and refresh your home screen by letting you change the shape of app icons. To select icon shapes, you’ll need an app called WinterBoard, which should instal with Icon Masks. If it doesn’t instal automatically, click on the link below for the procedure to download and instal WinterBoard manually.

I. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad

To do this procedure you must be jailbroken. If you aren’t, you can head to our Jailbreak How To’s section and pick the jailbreak for your version of iOS (currently at the time of writing this is 7.0.4). Once done with that procedure and you have Cydia installed, head back here to continue.

II. Install Icon Masks

1. Open Cydia (if it isn’t still open from the section above).

2. Tap Search in the bottom right corner.

3. Type Icon Masks.

4. Tap on Icon Masks when it shows up (not the one by Dennis).

5. Tap Install in the top right corner.

6. Tap Confirm in the top right corner.

7. Tap Restart. (In the video, I had installed Icon Masks beforehand, so I didn’t need to restart my phone).

III. Setup Icon Masks

1. Tap Winterboard.

2. Tap Select Themes.

3. Choose a shape you want your app icons to take.

4. Tap Winterboard in the top left.

5. Tap Respring on the top left to restart your phone. Your icons will take on their new shapes once your phone has restarted.

IV. Use Icon Masks

1. Follow Section III to try out different shapes.

• The first two themes allow you to remove labels from either undocked icons, or docked icons. You can select one, or both to get rid of icon labels underneath app icons.

• Any theme beginning with an (M) changes the shape of the icons. You can only select one at a time.