How to customise the iPhone lock screen

The lock screen on your iPhone is the first thing you'll see when you press the Home button to wake it up – so it would be nice to personalise it to your own tastes, wouldn't it?

Unlike Android phones, which have almost limitless customisation choices, the iPhone is certainly more rigid in what it will allow you to do – but it still gives you options.

Customise the lock screen wallpaper

Once your screen timeout kicks in, your iPhone's display will go dark and remain so until you press the Home button. Once it awakens, your lock screen wallpaper will become the focal point of your phone for a short period of time – so it makes sense to have an image there you like, right?

To change your lock screen wallpaper:

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Wallpaper.
3. The images on screen show you your lock screen wallpaper on the left, and the Home screen wallpaper on the right. Tap Choose an New Wallpaper.
4. At the top you can choose from Apple's pre-installed Dynamic or Still wallpapers by tapping on the images. If you'd rather set one of your own pictures as your lock screen wallpaper, scroll to the Photos section and select the location where your chosen image is stored.

5. When you've located the image you wish to use, tap the thumbnail to select it.
6. Touch and drag to position your image as you wish, and use two fingers to zoom if required. You can also choose between a Still or Perspective image. Perspective images appear to be positioned beneath the screen itself, rather than on it, changing the view as you tilt the phone. When you're happy with your selection, tap Set.
7. Tap to set your new image as Lock Screen, Home Screen or Both.
8. That's your new lock screen wallpaper set. Press the Power button to lock your iPhone and check it out!

Edit lock screen notification settings

When your iPhone is unlocked, notifications can appear in three different ways: badges, banners and alerts. With the screen locked, however, these variations disappear and are replaced with a single notification type, which appears across the main window.

These notifications will have the name of the app that's putting it on the lock screen, and often a short preview of the content. In some cases, such as messages and email, swiping across this notification will allow you to reply to or dismiss the item without unlocking your phone to open it.

Depending on how you use your device, that may not be a good thing – after all, if you can read, or reply to an email or message without unlocking your phone, then so can anyone else who picks it up!

Thankfully, preventing an app from sending notifications to the lock screen is simple and straightforward:

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Notifications.
3. Tap on the app you wish to change the setting for.
4. Tap the Show on Lock Screen switch to turn it off.

This will stop the app from sending notifications to your lock screen, but won't change any of its other notification settings: badges will still show to indicate items requiring your attention, for example.

One other notable notification setting that affects the lock screen is reserved for the Messages app alone. Rather than turning off the notification, you can choose to prevent it from showing you a preview of the message content (thereby keeping it private) by accessing the Messages notifications settings as above, then scrolling to the bottom and tapping the Show Previews switch to prevent these from being seen. You'll see you have a received a message and from whom, but not the content itself.

Manage the Notification and Control Centre bars

By default, the Notification and Control Centre bars are enabled on the lock screen of your iPhone.

Notification bar

At the top of the display you should see a small bar in the centre of the screen. Place a finger on this and drag it down the screen, and you will open the Notification Centre, which by default gives you access to two sets of data: Today and Notifications.

Notifications are are pieces of information that your iPhone is telling you about. this may include apps being updated, missed calls, messages received, and anything else that the notification settings allows - each app has a switch to enable it to be shown in Notification Centre.

Today is a quick way to access information that's relevant to you today – hence the name! This can include calendar highlights, stocks and shares information, weather highlights and much more. As you add apps to your iPhone, some of them will enable you to add widgets into the Today stream, personalising your content.

As you add more apps to your iPhone, more content can appear in these two data streams. This data is often quite personal so depending on how you use your phone, you may wish to prevent access to these from the lock screen.

To prevent access to either of these streams:

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Touch ID & Passcode.
3. Scroll down to the Allow access when locked section and tap the relevant switch to turn off Today or Notifications View.

There are also options to prevent you from rejecting calls by sending a predetermined message, and accessing Wallet to use Apple Pay from the lock screen. Again, tap the switches to disable these.

Control Centre Bar

At the bottom of the screen, just above the Home button, you should be able to see another small grey bar. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen across this bar will open the Control Centre, which gives you quick access into commonly used settings, and shortcuts to some useful apps: Torch, Calculator and the Timer,among others.

While Control Centre doesn't allow access to personal information in the same way the Notification Centre does, it does afford access to settings controlling the device's connections to the outside world: the Wi-Fi connection can be enabled or disabled there, and also Flight Mode – which if enabled would prevent your iPhone from making or receiving calls or text messages, as well as data-based functions such as emails and social media updates.

If you want to prevent access to the Control Centre from the lock screen, then there are just a few simple steps to follow:

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Control Centre.
3. Tap the switch labelled Access on Lock Screen to turn this off.

So there you are, a short guide to customising the Lock Screen on your iPhone. Admittedly it's more about turning off access to certain elements rather than adding new ones – but that's the iPhone for you!