It’s indeed cool to customize your iPhone’s home screen with unique app icons and eye-catching widgets but did you ever wish to give a more personal touch to the status bar only to get disappointed by the lack of an option to do so? If yes, here’s a nifty hack that allows you to customize your iPhone’s status bar with an emoji.

So, how do you show an emoji next to the clock in the status bar on your iPhone? Well, this hack requires a new feature called Focus mode designed to help you concentrate on a task by keeping distractions at bay. When Focus is enabled on iPhone, an icon appears in the iPhone’s status bar. You can take advantage of this feature (supported on iOS 15 or later) to show a preferred icon or emoji in the status bar. 

Step 1: Open the Settings app on your iPhone and choose Focus. 

Step 2: Now, tap the “+“ button at the top right corner of the screen.

Step 3: Next, tap Custom and give a suitable name to your focus profile. 

Step 4: Next up, select the emoji or an icon you wish to use. Currently, you have over 25 emojis to choose from, including a smiley face, a paw print, bookmark, scissors, bulb, flame, etc. After that, tap Next.

Step 5: Up next, you can choose who can send you notifications, incoming call alerts, and the apps that can notify you when this Focus profile is active.

If all you want is to deck up the status bar of your iPhone with an emoji, just allow people and apps to send you notifications without any restriction. This way, you can show the emoji without interrupting your communication. In the end, make sure to tap Done to finish. 

There you go! In the future, whenever you enable this custom Focus profile, the emoji (or your selected icon) will appear in your iPhone’s status bar. 

There are multiple ways to turn on Focus mode on your iOS. You can get it done from the Settings app > Focus > Focus profile or Control Center > Focus > Focus profile.

So, that’s how this nifty hack works. If you are fond of customization, chances are it would win you over. While it would have been better to customize the status bar without activating Focus mode, I don’t think it will be a huge dealbreaker for many. Do you agree? Make sure to share your feedback in the comments.