Early Sunday morning, we reported on a rumor about iOS & iPadOS 18 potentially adding a new feature that would force Home Screen app icons to dynamically change their appearance with the user-selected Light Mode or Dark Mode setting.
But as we eluded to in our news piece, this is a feature that jailbreakers have had access to for a long time. The Ayedapt theme by iOS developer and graphical designer Surenix was just one great example; it allowed the Home Screen’s app icons to change automatically based on your Light Mode or Dark Mode setting, almost exactly like the native feature in iOS & iPadOS 18 is expected to do.
But if you aren’t too concerned about the ‘automatic’ or ‘dynamic’ nature of this feature, and perhaps you have no intention of upgrading to iOS or iPadOS 18 because you’re a jailbreaker at heart and you always stay on the lowest possible firmware, then the good news we’re here to share with you is that you may be able to have your cake and eat it too.
While the Ayedapt theme, which launched back in 2020, was a part of the now shuttered Dynastic Repo repository and is therefore no longer available for users to buy and use, it’s also true that there are newer themes you can download and use right now to enjoy true Dark Mode-friendly app icons on your device, whether you’re jailbroken or not.
Having said that, you can get Dark Mode-friendly app icons on your iPhone or iPad’s Home Screen right now, even if you’re running iOS or iPadOS 17 or earlier, and you can also refrain from upgrading to iOS or iPadOS 18 if you want, while retaining these features, to either keep your existing jailbreak or to enhance your odds of being able to jailbreak again in the future.
Vantaye
One such theme is Vantaye by iOS developer and graphic designer Surenix, which is a Dark Mode-friendly Home Screen app icon theme that we showed you back in 2020 that allowed you to theme individual app icons on your device with a darker aesthetic.
A free trial of Vantaye is available to test from the theme’s website, but by buying the theme for the price of $9.99, you’ll have full access to more than 300 supported app icons. The price may be a bit steep for some, but we want to underscore the quality of Surenix’s work. Veteran jailbreakers may remember him as one of the most popular theme makers, so this is something you’ll need to weigh in your decision.
Darker Plus
Alternatively, a less expensive option is to try a theme called Darker Plus by theme maker tntt, which also Dark Mode-friendly app icons – nearly 600 of them, in fact – in a much cheaper $0.99 package that is available to purchase from the Havoc repository.
A lot of the Darker Plus app icons look absolutely wonderful, and we also like how the theme maker has essentially given users the option of using darkened app icons or pitch-black app icons. The former looks more synonymous with Apple’s version of OLED-friendly Dark Mode, which integrates some forms of dark grays instead of pure blacks. Those demanding true black can, of course, use those icons instead.
As an added bonus, Darker Plus also includes Dark Mode-friendly notification badges, so that’s another point for Darker Plus that prospective users may want to consider.
Whichever theme you may choose to try, they can be applied on jailbroken iPhones and iPads via the SnowBoard theming engine, which offers the highest level of customization. Non-jailbroken devices will instead need to resort to using the Shortcuts app, which assigns Home Screen-based shortcuts with a custom icon (in this case, a themed icon) to the app of your choosing.
Also see: How to theme icons on a jailbroken iPhone with SnowBoard
Are you planning to make any of your Home Screen’s app icons more Dark Mode friendly with the Darker Plus theme? Let us know in the comments section down below.