In recent years, iOS and macOS have been closer than ever to having feature parity. Nowadays, macOS releases mostly bring features first introduced on the iPhone and iPad, occasionally adding a new twist. However, despite this feature parity, there are some gaps, mostly to do with customization. Here are a couple of recent customization additions that have been made on the iPhone and iPad that haven’t quite made their way to the Mac yet.
Lock Screen customization
With iOS 16 (and subsequently, iPadOS 17), Apple introduced lock screen customization on the iPhone and iPad, allowing users to add custom widgets to the lock screen, customize their font, and more. It was beautiful, but this level of customization never came to the Mac.
With macOS Sonoma, Apple did redesign the Lock Screen on macOS a little bit, but not to the same degree as the iPhone and iPad. There were no widgets, nor font customization. It lacked the pizazz of the aforementioned lock screen redesigns.
So, if Apple’s looking for ideas for next years macOS – it’d be really nice to see true lock screen customization, just like the rest of the ecosystem.
App Icon customization
With iOS and iPadOS 18, Apple introduced dark mode and tinting options for app icons, allowing users to sort of theme their iPhone home screens. While some users don’t necessarily love the tinted icons, I do – and it’s just an option.
However, that isn’t the whole story. Even before iOS 18, app developers always had the ability to allow users to change the default app icon on iOS, completely natively – no shortcuts hack required. macOS does have the ability to allow typical app icon customization, but it isn’t as common as it is on iOS and iPadOS.
It’s unlikely that app icon customization on macOS would become nearly as prominent as it is on iOS, but it’d be pretty cool to see features like this come to the Mac.
Control Center customization
In Apple’s latest releases, iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, we received a Control Center overhaul, allowing third party apps to add toggles to Control Center, and also allowing users to mostly rearrange Control Center as they please.
And, as is the case for everything else on this list, macOS is missing this same level customization. In macOS Big Sur, Apple did introduce Control Center on macOS, but its been left mostly untouched since its release over four years ago.
I wouldn’t anticipate the same level of rearrangement as you can achieve on iOS, but some third party integration would be sweet.
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