Christmas iPhone Home Screen Ideas You Can Set Up in Minutes

For a Christmas Home Screen, pick a festive wallpaper, tint your icons to match it, and keep one or two widgets that suit the season, such as a calendar for December or a photo widget with holiday pictures. Everything here uses settings built into iOS, so you can switch back in January in a few taps.

Start with the wallpaper

Open Settings, tap Wallpaper, then Add New Wallpaper. The buttons at the top of the gallery let you build one from Photos, Emoji or a Color. Tap Set as Wallpaper Pair to use it on both screens, or Customize Home Screen to choose a plain color or blur the Home Screen so icons stand out. These are the steps in Apple’s wallpaper guide ↗.

• Photo: a picture of your tree or lights works well with blur on the Home Screen, so the icons stay readable.
• Emoji: a repeated tree or snowflake pattern gives a playful look without hunting for images.
• Color: deep red, forest green or a soft pink makes a clean base for tinted icons.

Tint icons to match

Touch and hold the Home Screen background, tap Edit, then Customize. Choose Tinted and use the sliders for color and saturation, or the eyedropper to pick a color from your wallpaper. Apple’s Home Screen guide ↗ also describes Clear, which makes icons translucent over a photo. Tinting applies to icons and widgets together, so check that text in your widgets is still easy to read.

Four looks to try

1. Classic red and green: a red wallpaper, icons tinted dark green, and a calendar widget at the top to keep track of the days until Christmas.
2. Pink Christmas: a pale pink color wallpaper, light pink tint and a photo widget with ornaments or baking pictures.
3. Snowy and clear: a white or winter photo with the Clear icon style and only a few apps on the first page.
4. Cozy night: a dark photo of lights, the Dark appearance and a warm gold tint that stays readable in a dim room.

Whatever you choose, keep the apps you use every day in the same places. A seasonal look should not make it harder to find your messages or calendar.

Match the Lock Screen and switch back later

The Lock Screen has its own gallery. Touch and hold it to add a festive wallpaper and change the clock style, as explained in Apple’s Lock Screen guide ↗. You can also link a Lock Screen to a Focus so the holiday wallpaper appears only when that Focus is on. In January, return to your usual wallpaper pair and switch the icon style in Customize back to the look you had before.

For layouts that work all year, see our aesthetic Home Screen ideas. To place the widgets, follow how to add widgets to your iPhone. If you want the number of days left on screen, our countdown widget guide compares apps that show it.