Recently, people have emailed me claiming the extension doesn't do what it says it does, that it doesn't "break free from rows and columns" and whatnot. My description is factually correct; Iconoclasm lets you do all of that. However, due to the lack of documentation until now, it is understandable that people would misunderstand. So here is a page clarifying how to use Iconoclasm beyond what you can do once it is installed.

Layouts are property list files (plists) located at /Library/Iconoclasm/Layouts. In most cases, they can be edited through a typical text editor, or through Apple’s Property List Editor utility.

You have two possible kinds of layouts with Iconoclasm: grid layouts and freeform layouts.

Grid layouts are obviously defined by rows and columns. Freeform layouts have a set amount of icons, and for each icon a pair of X and Y coordinates, letting you specify their exact position.

It must also be mentioned that the origin (0, 0) for the coordinate system on the iPhone is the top-left corner of the device. The X value increases as you go right, and the Y value increases as you go down.

Grid layouts contain three keys:

• “EasyGrid” must be set to YES
• Cols is an array containing the X coordinate to the leftmost point for the icons in each column
• Rows is an array containing the Y coordinate to the topmost point for the icons in each row

Here is what the included Five-Column SpringBoard looks like under Property List Editor:

And here is what it looks like in a regular text editor:

(For the sake of making it fit on the iPhone screen without shrinking down the text to an unreadable size, the doctype has been chopped off; you can get the same exact file with the doctype intact by digging down into /Library/Iconoclasm/Layouts/Five-Column SB (5x4).plist.)

Freeform layouts contain one array called “Origins”. Inside this array is a dictionary for each icon you want on-screen. Each dictionary has two keys:

• “x”: The X coordinate for the leftmost point of that icon.
• “y”: The Y coordinate for the topmost point of that icon.

Here is the Triangle layout in Property List Editor:

And here is the Origins array in a text editor:

Sorry.

I am working on a visual editor for Iconoclasm layouts, and it is approximately 60% complete. It will make making layouts like these a lot simpler than it currently is. That said, if you want pixel-accurate alignment, you’ll most likely want to edit the plists directly.