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Different (randomly changing) Icon sizes in iPad OS14

Since updating to iOS 14 yesterday, I notice that the icons on my desktop seemingly randomly change in size. This includes the widgets. Is this purposeful? Any ideas?




iPad Pro 12.9-inch Wi-Fi

Posted on Sep 18, 2020 6:33 AM

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55 replies

Sep 27, 2020 4:45 PM in response to uburoibob

I just found out this by accident.


I had maybe 3-4 icons on each page that were significantly smaller than the rest. Tried toggling global icon sizes, changing text size, turning off screen auto lighting to no avail.


Then I tried editing the screen - you know - hold your finger on an icon until all the icons on that page have a circled x. This allows you to eliminate or move an icon to another spot. I grabbed one of the small icons and moved it to a different location then back to where I wanted and it magically resized itself to the common size for all icons.


Not sure if it will stick but so far so good.

Sep 18, 2020 7:21 AM in response to uburoibob

I can confirm that you’re certainly not alone.


Right from update to the production release of iPadOS14, I have experienced the problem myself - and have today noted and replied to multiple reports of this issue within this community. I initially spent many hours with the belief that this was some clever new feature of the OS that I simply couldn’t fathom, searching documentation for an explantation - before concluding that this is one of many functional bugs.


The inconsistent Home Screen App icon sizing also extends to folder icons and the new Widgets. As you swipe between Home Screens - and launch/close Apps, different icons and widgets resize. I’ve also seen a couple of occurrences of a vertically elongated App icon. A forced-restart of the iPad (to resolve other issues) appeared to stabilise the problem - only for the issue to later return.


Here is one of the other reports of this issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251807822


Sorry, despite many hours of effort, I can’t offer you a lasting workaround.

Sep 21, 2020 4:58 AM in response to uburoibob

It seems to be affecting lots of iphones and ipads. It also appears to have something to do with wallpapers and how they are causing it when you change them.


i can confirm that is the case, as it only happens when I adjust or change the wallpaper.


here is another discussion on the problem.


https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-14-different-icon-sizes-on-ipad-and-iphone.2255112/

Sep 26, 2020 1:57 AM in response to uburoibob

I’ve since shut-down and restarted the my iPad Pro (not a forced-restart) and the Widget and Home Screen icons have returned to consistent sizing - but for just how long I’ll have to wait and see.


I have noted some memory management issues reminiscent of that experienced mid-life of iPadOS13. Whilst likely to unrelated, since updating to iPadOS14.x, what is really peculiar is a marginal increase in measured RAM capacity from 3998MB to 4001.4MB. I have confirmed this anomaly with an identical iPad of the same model.


Clearly, the iPad can’t have any more [or less] RAM than it started with, so the only logical explanation is that during update something has changed the internal RAM-memory mapping. Go figure!

Sep 28, 2020 1:52 AM in response to uburoibob

From my personal experience the problem only seems to happen with the iPad Pro series, although a couple of people who have more modern iPads seem to be seeing it as well. This could be an issue associated with the GPUs in the A series processor and certain iPad models have different ones that do not do this.


For me when I accidentally clicked on the Wallpaper setting and closed the settings app, the problem immediately appeared. Even after updating to iPadOS 14.0.1 on both iPad Pro 9.7" and 11", it still exhibits the bug, so the problem is not solved with iPadOS 14.0.1.


As a test, I even reset the settings of the iPad Pro 11", but the issue still persists. This could be similar to the problem some on us face with the Home app being stuck on the Loading Accessories and Scenes screen, in that it is completely random who is affected. From the posts I have read, the problem seems to be associated with the iCloud settings held on the Apple servers. I say this based on the fact that I have that problem on different iPad's that are associated with the same iCloud account and local iPad resets don't solve that either.


But getting back to the problem at hand, from the responses on this post, it seems that anything that is not an iPad Pro or reasonably new iPad seems to be immune from the issue. As for the iPhone series, I am not sure what is causing the factor because quite a selection of models seem to have the problem, but again in a random basis. Again on iPhone series it could be a GPU chipset series issue.


The work-around that appears to solve the problem is that if you need to use the wallpaper setting, follow the points below.


1) Close the Settings app.

2) If the problem shows up, reboot the iDevice.


After a reboot, I have not seen the problem appear unless I revisit the Wallpaper Setting.


Other than that, we'll have to wait for Apple to solve it. However, I wouldn't hold my breath as Apple have been known to be glacial when it comes to solving certain problems. For instance the Zombie Apps problem associated with Inter App Audio was introduced back in iOS 7 and it has never been addressed.

Oct 7, 2020 12:23 PM in response to just ilario

Holy ***t. Have you tried the obvious i.e restarting. Also, have you tried calling Apple support. I did and they made me Reset certain chosen settings - please note, not the entire device - and it seemed okay for a bit. Then it started again. Then I restarted the device and it’s been okay for a few hours now. I know this is probably useless info, but, just reporting in case it’s useful. Will know better if it remains okay for a week or two. Another option - worst case - might be a factory reset. But it all depends on how much data and config you have on your iPad. And even then it’s not guaranteed.

Oct 19, 2020 5:17 AM in response to uburoibob

Someone suggested that long pressing on a small icon while in “edit screen” mode changes it to a large Icon. I tried this, and it worked, but then they changed back to the small size. I went back and tried again, only this time I went all around my iPad finding every small icon, including inside individual folders and in the new widgets, and long pressed on each one while in edit screen mode… Once I changed every small icon to the larger size while in edit mode, they stayed large. It’s been two days now and I don’t have any small icons anywhere on my home screen or in the folders.


I hope this helps, I’m sure it’s a glitch that Apple will fix, but this temporary fix seems to be working for me.

Different (randomly changing) Icon sizes in iPad OS14

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