Although Apple is stricter than most companies when it comes to what you can do to customise your iOS device, there are a few ways you can tailor it to make it feel like your own. Here's the Geek Squad guide to customising your iPad.
change the background
The easiest and most noticeable way of customising your iPad is to change the background picture that is displayed on the lock screen and behind the app icons when the iPad is unlocked. This is really easy to do.
To change the background, just go to Settings and then Wallpapers & Brightness. You can now click the image of your current background to select a new one.
You can choose one of Apple’s own wallpapers or select a picture you have taken from the Camera Roll. You can also choose whether you want this to be the Lock Screen image, the Home Screen image or both.
If the built-in wallpapers don’t take you fancy, there are plenty of places you can get alternatives. Websites like interfacelift.com have wallpapers specifically sized for Apple devices and there are also plenty of wallpaper apps available on the app store.
Changing the wallpaper has a huge effect on the look and feel of your iPad, especially if you are running iOS 7 with all its fancy transparent menus. Have a play around with different images and see what catches your eye.
change the sounds
If you get as many junk emails as me then your iPad is probably chirping away with notification sounds all day long! Luckily, you can customise these too.
To do this, go to Settings and then Sounds. You can then select the sound you want to customise and then choose the one you want from the list of available options. You can set different tones for emails, iMessages, FaceTime and loads of other things too.
organise your apps
Moving your apps and separating them into folders is another quick and easy way of customising your iPad to make it easier for you to use. The process couldn’t be simpler.
To move an app, simply press and hold your finger on the app icon until it starts to jiggle about. You can then drag it to any location you want. To move it from one page to another, just move it to the side of the screen for a few seconds and the screen will automatically move for you.
Putting your apps into folders is a very similar process. Press and hold the app until it starts jiggling around as above. Then if you drag one icon on top of another, the iPad will automatically create a folder for you. You can even change the name of the folder!
This is a great way of organising your apps to make them quicker and easier to locate without having to search through page after page of app icons.
CUSTOMISE ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS
The accessibility options on the iPad are mainly designed to help people who have hearing or sight difficulties but there are a few options in this menu that give you a few more ways to choose how your iPad looks and how it behaves.
To access the accessibility options just go to Settings > General > Accessibility Options.
The first option you may want to change in here is the Bold Text option. This is pretty self-explanatory and simply makes the text a bit thicker and easier to read. You can also increase the size of the text by using the Larger Type option. Both of these options will also affect the text in some compatible apps as well.
Another option in this menu that you may want to try is the Reduce Motion setting. This replaces the normal zooming menu animations with a simple fade in/fade out effect. Some people prefer the look of this and it seems to actually speed up the animations slightly, so moving from one screen to another may be a little bit quicker.
There are lots of other options in this accessibility menu but it is probably best not to play around with the rest of them as some of them like Voice Over can be a little difficult deactivate once turned on.
So there you have the Geek Squad quick guide to customising your iPad. Why not tell us how you like to customise your iPad using the comments section below?