win98 iPhone Skin Tutorial

 (my home screen)

Anyway without further ado, let us commence! This process should take about 20-30 minutes, depending on how many icons you have and how efficient you are at a repetitive task.

Step 1. First off, the wallpaper. I found a version of this online, but I edited it to have room for the taskbar at the bottom. Here it is if you’d like it.

Step 2. Visit https://win98icons.alexmeub.com/ to find your icons. Try and stick with the larger icons as the smaller ones will come out to be very pixelated. Also, most modern day apps (such as discord or youtube on mine) will not have a direct parallel in windows icons, so get creative! It’s your phone and there’s dozens upon dozens of icons that are up to your judgement to use. 

Step 3. [For this step you’ll need a photo editing program, but even the most basic can do. The only functions you’ll need are the ability to make a custom canvas/artboard, and to change the brush color.] First, make a canvas/artboard of around 200x200px, no more is necessary for the final product. Make the color of the canvas/bottom layer that windows 98 teal shade (1,128,129 RGB) (99,1,0,49 CYMK) (#018081 HEX). Import/place/embed an icon, and scale it up so it is now 200px. The icons come with a transparent background, so its just the tedious task of placing and scaling. Save each icon when you’re done scaling up, and move on to the next (I suggest deleting the icon layer, but keeping the canvas/drawing layer).

Step 3.5 (my personal suggestion). Create a new home screen for the new icons you’re about to create to go on to

Step 4. With all your edited icons downloaded, open up the shortcuts app. In the top right, click the plus button. Name your shortcut the name of the app you’re replacing. (The color and glyph do not matter). Click the blue button “add action”, and find the section “scripting” (left column directly under the “all actions section”). Click the top result “Open App”, and select the app that you want the shortcut to open.

Step 4.5. In the top right, to the left of the X button, you’ll find the blue sliders button. Click this. Tap on the first result “Add to home screen.” From there you can change the name if you desire (again), and this is where you choose the icon you want to use. Click “choose photo,” and select the icon you made before. When it looks good, click “add” in the top left. Congrats! You just made an icon! Repeat steps 3-4.5 as much as needed, however before you go off too soon there will be some advice for you later.

As for the widgets, I used an app called Widgetsmith that allows you to display any photo from your photos app you choose. Its a fairly simple process of finding any images from windows 98 (solitaire, the logo etc) that you want to use and importing them, that it walks you through in the app, so I won’t be doing a tutorial here. Feel free to use any images you want too! For added effect, I found a screenshot of MS Paint, cut out the section of canvas from the screenshot, and added my own image I found. The art from both widgets on my main home screen is from Vincent Trinidad

Tips n Tricks:

1. Like I said earlier, when finding icons, try to use the larger size. Smaller sizes will still be fine but will be a little blurrier

2. When making the icons, instead of going through steps 3, 4, 3, 4, you should do all if your icons in one go, then move on to step 4 and make all of the shortcuts in one go.

3. Blaze your own trail, mess with the colors if you want, make the wallpaper purple instead of teal, nobody’s gonna stop you. Live your life how you want it.

4. Call up someone and have a nice chat, we could all use it every now and then :)

Thank you for giving me your time, I hope you find the process as fun as I did!