Enlarge / Control Center has a whole new customization interface. (credit: Samuel Axon)

iOS 18 launched this week, and while its flagship feature (Apple Intelligence) is still forthcoming, the new OS included two significant new buckets of customization: the home screen and Control Center.

We talked about home screen a few days ago, so for our next step in our series on iOS 18, it’s now time to turn our attention to the new ways you can adjust the Control Center to your liking. While we’re at it, we’ll assess a few other features meant to make iOS more powerful and more efficient for power users.

This is by no means the most significant update for power users Apple has released of the iPhone operating system—there’s nothing like Shortcuts, for example, or the introduction of the Files app a few years ago. But with the increasingly expensive iPhone Pro models, Apple still seems to be trying to make the case that you’ll be able to do more with your phone than you used to.

Enlarge / The final boss of the new WoW raid, who will now be beatable as a solo player in Story Mode. (credit: Blizzard)

After 20 years, it's now possible for solo players to finish storylines in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft that previously required a group to do an intensive raid.

That's thanks to "Story Mode," a new raid difficulty that was added for the final wing of the first raid of the recently released The War Within expansion.

Over the years, developer Blizzard has expanded the difficulty options for raids to meet various players and communities where they are in terms of play styles. The top difficulty is Mythic, where the semi-pro hardcore guilds compete. Below that is Heroic, where serious, capital-G gamers coordinate with friends in weekly raid schedules to progress. Then there's Normal, which still requires some coordination but isn't nearly as challenging and can typically be completed within a few tries by a pick-up group.

Enlarge / iOS 18's home screen color tinting and grid-based app icons in action. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apart from the much-ballyhooed (and delayed) Apple Intelligence, a big change to home screen customization and app icon placement is one of iOS 18’s flagship features, alongside an overhauled Control Center.

With the public launch of iOS 18 this week, we’ll be delving into those flagship features one by one, and I’m starting with the home screen because I have often criticized the iPhone’s home screen experience in the past. iOS 18 promises the biggest update to home screen customization since, well, ever.

Let’s walk through how to use the new features, explore how they work, and try to answer the most important question: does the iPhone finally offer the kind of home screen flexibility that users have been asking for?