I’m assuming you realize that you can add your favorite websites to your Home Screen on your iPad or iPhone right from Safari.
Just tap the Action Button (the box with the curved arrow escaping it) and choose “Add to Home Screen”.
This is a wonderful way of adding frequently used websites to your Home Screen — especially those ones that function so well on iOS as web apps.
The problem comes when these otherwise awesome websites neglect to add an icon to their website for use on iOS devices. The iPad tries its best by using a screenshot of the page you’re adding, but when skimming your eye over pages of apps looking for the one you saved for a particular website, you can easily just miss it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could take matters into your own hands and make an icon yourself?
Well, you can. And Touch Icon has provided a few ways to do it: a website (FREE) and an app ($0.99).
The Touch Icon Creator app (see AppStore profile below) will ask you for the type of Home Screen button you’d like to make (Message, Email, FaceTime or URL). It will ask you for the title you’ll give the button (the text that appears below the icon) and then the link you want to be associated with the button (the cell number, the email address, the Apple ID or URL).
Next you get to take a photo, select one from your photo stream or choose one from that app’s built in library to serve as the icon itself (tap the little head silhouette). Position, zoom, and crop the image to your liking.
Once you tap “Create” the app brings up the Touch Icon website in Safari which will create a redirect to the link you set up with the image you chose attached to it. All you have to do is tap the Action Button, as I explained before, and add this redirect to your home screen.
The Touch Icon website works in the same way but doesn’t work so well on iDevices. It does however allow you to do all of this setup on your desktop computer and email yourself that final link so that you can pick up that email on your iPad and complete the rest of the process.
For $0.99, I say buy the app and save yourself this trouble. Keep it simple.
It’s easy to create your own original icon for your iPhone Home screen using this app.
IT’S REALLY EASY!
- Select a photo saved in your iPhone that you wish to use, and then choose the area you wish to make into the icon.
- Enter the title and type (phone number, SMS, Email address, URL).
- Tap the create button.
- When you upload the photo, Safari will launch, so follow instructions there to add the icon onto your Home screen.
You can create as many icons you as you like.
Go ahead and add icons of friends and family, or anything else you’d like on your Home screen!
WHY USE THIS APP?
- Private information, such as phone numbers and Email addresses, are not transmitted to the site, so it is safer to use (only the icon image and title are actually sent).
- Exclusive to this app, you can turn off the dialing confirmation dialog, allowing a smooth one-touch dialing from your custom icon (selectable via iPhone’s Settings).
** IMPORTANT **
- Any custom icons created on your Home screen will become unusable if you uninstall this app.
- The contents of a custom icon can’t be changed once created. You need to delete the icon and create the icon again.
- JavaScript is required to run this application. It is usually enabled in the most of the cases but if the registration screen does not appear, please check settings>Safari>JavaScript to make sure that JavaScript is enabled.
- Version: 3.5
- Created & Sold by: Makoto Setoh
This app is designed for both iPhone and iPad- Categories: Utilities, Productivity
iPhone Screenshots:
iPad Screenshots:
Supported Devices
