The Ultimate iPhone Customization Guide

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Apple may have made the iPhone iOS too restrictive. So much so that it takes a lot of courage to jailbreak it simply to enable you to install cooler apps and some other customization features. But don’t let this disappoint you because there is some other customization and personalization you can enjoy without going to the darkside (jailbreaking). As for those who have mustered enough courage and have jailbroken their iPhones customizing is as simple as finding the right themes, wallpapers, ringtones, and more.

Searching for, Finding, and Applying Themes to Your iPhone

If you have not jailbroken your iPhone yet, changing themes is something that can only be done on your phone’s lockscreen and homescreen. There are various apps that let you change the app icons and screen background. All you have to do is enter the right search keywords at the App Store. For those with jailbroken iPhones, there are plenty of guides here that will help you out in changing the theme of your iPhone.

Changing the iPhone Wallpaper, Best Sources for Free and Paid Wallpapers

Unlike changing the default theme of your iPhone, replacing the default wallpaper is easier to do and does not require you to jailbreak your device. All you need to do is to go to Settings -> Wallpaper, and then select the wallpaper that you want to use. You can see the forward arrow besides the two available default wallpapers on your iPhone. Tap on that arrow and then you’ll see various preloaded images that you can use as wallpaper. If none of those wallpapers entice you, you can select from images in your iPhone camera roll.

It’s a good thing Apple has allowed the use of photos and images from your iPhone’s camera roll. All you need to do now is to find some cool wallpaper that you want to use. That’s where the next part of our guide comes in. This list enumerates the different wallpaper sources including native apps from the App Store, with various themes.

Customizing Your iPhone with Cool Ringtones

Want to change your iPhone’s ringtone? Thankfully, Apple lets you do so easily. All you need to do is go to Settings -> Sounds, scroll down and tap on the Ringtone option. From there you can see a list of ringtones that you can use on your iPhone. But wait, those are standard sounds and don’t really add any personalization, right?

The good news is, you can use other ringtones downloaded from external sources. You just need to sync these ringtone files to your iPhone via iTunes. Ringtones that you sync must be in .m4r format, and you can easily create them by converting standard music files using conversion software.

Once all of these requirements are met, you can easily sync ringtones by following the guides we’ve listed down below. Also included are great resources for finding the coolest ringtones that you can use on your iPhone. You might also want to download some of the iPhone ringtone apps available from the App Store.

Other Ways of Customizing Your iPhone

Aside from changing themes, wallpapers and ringtones, there are still other tricks that you might want to try to fully personalize or customize your iPhone. By default, you can customize your iPhone’s homescreen by using folders, adding non-standard icons for web apps and sites that you add to the homescreen, and organizing app icons into panes. Those are three of the simplest ways that you can easily tweak your iPhone’s appearance.

For a more complicated customization, you might also want to try customizing your iPhone’s contact list by adding contact photos and additional information to individual contact entries such as email address, URL and more numbers. And what’s the easiest way of customizing your iPhone? - buy cool iPhone cases.

Did we miss any iPhone customization tricks that you’ve used on your iPhone? Let us know by leaving a comment below.