Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, you can!

Mister Icon version 4 (a free update for all new & existing users) has introduced a custom icon creator feature.

Add your own text and fully control fonts, sizing, alignment, rotation, colours and more.

You can also use multiple text layers, emoji graphics and background circles.

It is really cool! 😀

Sample icons generated by the Mister Icon app, demonstrating a range of custom icon possibilities, including names, page numbers and even personal reminder messages.

Mister Icon contains 20 different icon sets (6 of which are round) and 153 icons in each of those sets.

Plus, as mentioned above, you can now create your own icons with custom text and/or emoji!
That means the number of icon labels is now infinite!

You can easily match your own custom icons in with existing icon sets, or you can start from scratch and create something truly unique. There are more than 90 different fonts to choose from.

Current icon styles in the Mister Icon app

The interface of Mister Icon is in English, and all ready-made icon sets are in English too. But the new custom icon creator feature supports non-English languages, with Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean and many South-East Asian fonts too. European languages are supported too, and there are even fonts for Cherokee and Ethiopian! Virtually every system font supported by iOS/iPadOS is available for custom Mister Icons, plus a few extras.

I am really pleased to be able to introduce international language support in this way, as it finally makes Mister Icon truly useful for people all over the world.

The custom icon creator interface is largely self-explanatory, with graphical symbols and buttons, so I'm hoping that even non-English speakers will be able to understand how it works without many problems.

Sample custom icons generated by the Mister Icon app, demonstrating support for various international languages, including Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Hebrew, Chinese, Arabic, Khmer and Russian.

There are 45 different ready-made colour schemes built into the app, and you can create your own custom colour schemes too! Just choose your own text and background colours via black/white preset buttons, by using the app's colour wheel, or by entering six digit hexadecimal colour codes.

Built-in colour schemes

Custom colour scheme creation

No.   iOS/iPadOS already has the ability to create home screen folders, and already has an App Library feature that will automatically group your apps into categories, so Mister Icon doesn't replicate these features. (It can't anyway, as it is not currently possible for app developers to interact with users' home screens in such a fashion—which is probably a good thing from a security point of view.)

Mister Icon instead provides a different method of organisation. You do have to do some work yourself by choosing/creating Mister Icon labels and then moving them around your home screen, but the results can be impressive, personal and unique.

All icons in the Mister Icon app (even custom ones) can be easily installed via a simple ‘Add to Home Screen’ process.

There is no need to mess around with the Shortcuts app, but you can if you would like to make the icons perform special functions when you tap on them.

The Tips & Tricks section inside the Mister Icon app includes detailed instructions for both installation methods, but the standard ‘Add to Home Screen’ method is so easy that all you need to do is follow a few simple prompts.

iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 introduce several new home screen features, and they all work great with Mister Icon!

There is now the long awaited ability to freely move icons around the home screen, meaning you can easily create empty spaces. Mister Icon has long included special ‘blank’ icons that can be used to simulate an empty space as long as you are using a matching coloured wallpaper, but having the ability to have real empty spaces is a welcome solution and can make it much easier to create great Mister Icon home screen designs.

I've written an article about these blank spaces if you're interested in more discussion of this feature.

iOS/iPadOS 18 also introduces the ability to have ‘dark mode’ or ‘tinted’ home screen icons.

Icons installed via the Mister Icon app will look the same in both light, dark and automatic modes, but in tinted mode, they will automatically obtain the chosen colour scheme. The light parts of an icon will get the colour tint, and the dark parts of an icon sort-of get tinted too and also get a black-grey gradient applied. It is some special Apple magic and is quite clever really.

Unfortunately no.  Apple does not currently support transparent home screen icons for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

However, using a wallpaper the same colour as the icon background can result in a similar effect.

The Mister Icon app provides an assortment of ready-made wallpapers, plus you can now easily customise these wallpapers with exactly the colours you want, which makes matching your icon and wallpaper colours a simple task.

(In the interest of full disclosure, please note that an exact match may not be possible in all situations due to operating system constraints. Normally it works perfectly, but occasionally iOS/iPadOS will automatically adjust the brightness of a wallpaper, meaning that even if the icon and wallpaper are exactly the same colours, they still might not match perfectly once the wallpaper is applied to the home screen.
As mentioned though, this is rare—most of the time it works fine. Light colours like white are often the ones that have issues.)

Please visit the Wallpapers page for more information.

Yes, you can!   Mister Icon currently includes six special circular/round icon sets, and you can use the new Icon Creator to make your own custom circular/round icons too.

“How can this be?” You might be asking. Apple doesn't allow home screen icons to be circles!

Well, you're right! iOS/iPadOS currently does not allow for actual circular icons, but Mister Icon provides a special way to emulate the look of a circular icon. You just need to choose the icon and the colour you like, then choose an icon background colour that will effectively fill in the ‘corners’ of the icon (i.e. the area outside the circle). Then you just need to make sure to use a home screen wallpaper in a matching colour, so that the corners effectively blend in.

This might sound tricky, but it's really quite straightforward, and my app includes examples and more information to show how it all works. Round icons can really make your home screen stand out from the pack.

(Once again, just to be clear, round icons and wallpapers might not always match perfectly so you might not always be able to get the ideal round effect. Most of the time it's fine, but just occasionally you might run into issues due to the operating system.)

No. While each of these devices has a home screen with apps that could potentially benefit from Mister Icon's organisational labels, it is unfortunately not currently possible to add icons other than apps to these home screens.

Maybe one day the watchOS, tvOS and visionOS platforms that power these products will add the required capabilities that could make Mister Icon work on Apple Watch, Apple TV or Apple Vision Pro, but at least for now Mister Icon supports iPhone (iOS) and iPad (iPadOS) only.

No!  Definitely not.  The Mister Icon app is a one-off purchase.

Mister Icon is available on the App Store.