Apple released a semi-major update to its iOS operating system last night. The iOS 14.3 update added two significant features to the iPhone: the Apple Fitness Plus subscription service and App Store privacy labels. However, fans of customizing their iOS 14 home screens with custom icons are much more excited about the iOS 14.3 update for a smaller change it brought to the iPhone. Here’s why:

Previously, if you wanted to customize your home screen with bespoke app icons in iOS 14, you couldn’t get around the fact that you weren’t actually changing an app’s icon. Rather, you were creating a shortcut to a specific app via the Shortcuts app. That shortcut is the thing you assigned the custom icon to. The downside to this method has always been that tapping the shortcut icon you created wouldn’t launch the app it was associated with outright. Instead, it would first launch the Shortcuts app, which would then open the actual app you wanted to open in the first place.

While not a major hindrance from a usage standpoint, the fact that the Shortcuts app always needed to open first before the actual app the custom icon was created for took away some of the wow factor of finally being able to customize your iPhone’s home screen icons.

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