The latest iOS 18 brings some interesting home screen customization options, including the ability to make app icons dark on your iPhone. You get to choose between tinted style, light mode, and dark mode appearance for your home screen app icons. With a back background, the dark icons look aesthetically pleasing and blend in smoothly with the Dark mode on your iPhone. However, when you change your iPhone icons to dark, you may notice that not all of the icons change. Keep reading to know why some app icons don’t turn dark in iOS 18.
Why All App Icons Don’t Change Color
If some home screen app icons aren’t turning dark in iOS 18, those apps might not be updated to include the dark icon alternatives. All the built-in iPhone apps have both Light and Dark icons to match your preferred aesthetic. Third-party app developers have to update their apps to include light and dark mode icons. If a developer hasn’t updated the app, the iOS system will attempt to generate it for you. For this, your iPhone analyzes different third-party icons to detect foreground and background elements. Upon analyzing, it chooses and applies a suitable theme automatically. This is what we see at the moment with many third-party apps on our iPhones.
That said, an iPhone can’t do it accurately all the time. In the below screenshot, you can see Reddit, 8 Ball Pool, and Return to Monkey Island app icons stay in their same vibrant colors rather than switching to a dark theme. In this case, an iPhone cannot automatically separate elements in the icon image. As a result, it cannot change the colors. Instead, you’ll notice that your iOS has applied a dimming effect so the icon appears less bright. Of course, that icon won’t match the aesthetics of the rest of the icons, which makes them noticeable.
If an app developer hasn’t introduced the new dark icon alternatives, you can’t do anything at your end other than wait. You can’t pick your own app icon images until the developer offers some custom choices.
Apple’s iOS uses a different algorithm for the tinted app icons that lets you choose a custom tint for all your app icons. Unlike the Dark mode, iOS 18 applies the tint appearance more universally. So, app icons may appear more uniform in tinted appearance, rather than dark mode. However, not everyone is good with aesthetics. Sometimes, the tinted effect looks damn ugly that it can kill the look and feel of the icons.
Now that the stable version of iOS 18 is available for everyone, we should be seeing more developers update their apps and adopt dark mode icons in the coming weeks. So, if your favorite apps don’t offer dark icons, you should wait until the developer releases an app update. Make sure to keep an eye out and check the App Store for any available updates.
