iPhone Shortcut Icon: How to Change It, and What It Really Controls
On this page, 10 sections
A shortcut you use every day should be findable without reading. Mine sit on the home screen and I hit them by shape and colour, never by name. Getting there means changing the icon, and that is where people get stuck, because iPhone has two separate icons for the same shortcut and they are edited in completely different places.
I run a free Shortcut of my own that people put on their home screen, so I get this question a lot. Here is the whole thing, both icons, plus the parts Apple does not explain.
The two icons, and why the distinction matters
Every shortcut on your iPhone has an icon inside the Shortcuts app: a coloured tile with a white glyph on it. That is the one you see when you open Shortcuts and scroll your list.
If you also add the shortcut to your home screen, iOS makes a second, independent icon for it. That one can be a photo, a downloaded image, or a screenshot. It has nothing to do with the tile in the Shortcuts app and changing one does not change the other.
Most confusion about shortcut icons comes down to editing the first one and expecting the second to update. It will not. Work out which icon you are actually looking at before you start.
Changing the tile inside the Shortcuts app
This is the quick one and it takes four taps.
- Open Shortcuts.
- Find the shortcut, press and hold it, then choose the option to edit or open its details.
- Tap the coloured icon shown next to the shortcut’s name at the top of the screen.
- Pick a Colour from the grid, then switch to Glyph and pick a symbol. The glyph list is long and it has a search field, so type what you mean rather than scrolling.
- Tap Done and back out.
Practical advice from having done this a few hundred times: colour is doing more work than glyph. At tile size the glyph is small and half the symbols look like each other. Colour reads instantly. Give each category of shortcut its own colour and the list becomes navigable at a glance.
Changing the home screen icon
This is the icon people actually care about, and it is set at the moment you add the shortcut to your home screen.
- Open Shortcuts and open the shortcut’s details.
- Tap the share button, the square with an arrow coming out of the top.
- Choose Add to Home Screen.
- On the preview screen, tap the small icon thumbnail to the left of the name field. You will be offered Take Photo, Choose Photo and Choose File.
- Pick your image. Anything square works best, since iOS crops to a square and then rounds the corners.
- Edit the name underneath. Keep it short, because the home screen truncates anything long.
- Tap Add.
[NEED: screenshot of the Add to Home Screen preview screen with the icon thumbnail and name field]
The image you choose is copied at that moment. Deleting the source photo afterwards does not break the icon.
Changing it later is where Apple is annoying
There is no edit button on a home screen shortcut icon. If you want a different image, you delete the icon from the home screen and add it again with the new picture. The shortcut itself is untouched by this, since the home screen entry is only a launcher pointing at it.
So the workflow is: long press the home screen icon, remove it, go back to Shortcuts, run Add to Home Screen again with the image you actually wanted. It is clumsy, it has been clumsy for years, and I have no clever way around it.
Where to get icons that do not look homemade
You do not need a design tool. Three approaches that work:
- Screenshot something. Any square crop of any image on your phone is a valid icon. Crop it in Photos first so the framing is what you want.
- Use a solid colour with a symbol. Simple and legible beats detailed and pretty at that size. Your home screen icon is about 60 points across and detail vanishes.
- Match your home screen theme. If you have tinted or darkened your app icons, a bright full colour shortcut icon will stick out badly, which may be exactly what you want for something you press often.
One honest limitation: home screen shortcut icons do not always behave identically to real app icons under every icon appearance setting iOS offers. If the icon looks wrong next to your app icons after changing your home screen appearance, that is the reason. [NEED: verify] which appearance modes in the current iOS release apply to shortcut icons specifically.
What a home screen shortcut can and cannot do
Worth setting expectations, because a shortcut icon is not quite an app icon.
It cannot show a notification badge. It does not appear in the App Library. It does not get its own storage entry in Settings. And it launches through the Shortcuts app, which means a fraction of a second of delay before your shortcut actually starts. On a recent iPhone that delay is barely perceptible.
What it does do is put a one tap action on your home screen with no app installed, which for a lot of jobs is the entire point. My own Grabio Shortcut is a good example: it is a free Apple Shortcut with no App Store presence at all, and a home screen icon is the only way to give it a permanent place on your phone. The full explanation of how a Shortcut based tool works is in how Grabio works, and you can Get the Shortcut if you want one to practise on.
The share sheet icon is a third thing
If a shortcut is set to accept input, it also shows up in the share sheet when you tap Share on a photo, a video or a link. The icon there comes from the Shortcuts app tile, meaning the colour and glyph you set in the first section.
This is the placement I use most, and I would argue it beats a home screen icon for anything that operates on a file. You are already looking at the photo. Sharing it to the shortcut is fewer taps than going home, tapping an icon and then picking the file again. Tools like the QR code generator on iPhone make sense from the home screen, while anything that starts with an existing file belongs in the share sheet.
You can reorder share sheet entries. Tap Share, scroll to the bottom of the action list, tap Edit Actions, and drag your shortcut to the top so it stops hiding behind six system actions.
A note on naming
The name matters more than people expect, because it is what Siri listens for. Say “Hey Siri” followed by the shortcut’s exact name and it runs. So name shortcuts as things you would plausibly say out loud, and avoid names that collide with app names or common Siri phrases.
Short names also survive the home screen better. Anything past around twelve characters gets cut off with an ellipsis under the icon, which defeats the purpose of labelling it at all.
Sorting the mess once it grows
Once you have twenty shortcuts, icons alone stop being enough. Shortcuts supports folders: tap the folder icon in the top corner of the Shortcuts app to create one, then drag shortcuts into it. I keep separate folders for file conversion, saving media, and home automation, and colour code within each. That combination of folder plus consistent colour is what makes a large collection usable. If you are working out which conversions are worth building a shortcut around at all, converting any file format on iPhone lists what the phone can and cannot handle natively.
iPhone shortcut icons: FAQ
How do I change the icon of a shortcut on iPhone?
Open Shortcuts, open the shortcut’s details, and tap the coloured icon next to its name. You can pick a colour and a glyph there. That changes the tile inside the Shortcuts app and inside the share sheet.
Can I use my own photo as a shortcut icon?
Yes, on the home screen version only. When you use Add to Home Screen, tap the icon thumbnail on the preview screen and choose Take Photo, Choose Photo or Choose File. The tile inside the Shortcuts app is limited to Apple’s colours and glyphs.
How do I change a home screen shortcut icon after adding it?
You cannot edit it in place. Delete the icon from the home screen, then run Add to Home Screen again from the Shortcuts app and pick the new image. The shortcut itself is unaffected.
Why does my shortcut icon look different from my app icons?
Home screen shortcut icons are created from an image you supply rather than from an app bundle, so they do not always follow every home screen appearance setting the way app icons do. Choosing an image that matches your theme is the practical fix.
Does a shortcut icon on the home screen take up storage?
Effectively none. It is a launcher that points at a shortcut already stored in the Shortcuts app, plus the small image you chose for it.
How do I move my shortcut to the top of the share sheet?
Tap Share on any file, scroll to the bottom of the action list, tap Edit Actions, then drag your shortcut upward. It stays where you put it across apps.