How to Hide Apps on an iPhone

Sometimes you want an app on your phone, but not necessarily on your home screen. Thankfully, instead of deleting apps outright, you can hide apps on your iPhone until you need them.

Let’s go through how to hide apps on your iPhone and where to find those apps if you do. We also have tips on how to prevent apps from showing up in search and your App Store purchase history. Read on to find out more.

How to hide your apps

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Hiding apps only takes a few steps. Follow us to learn how:

1. Long press on your wallpaper until the app icons wiggle. You can also long press on an app and “Edit home screen” Request.

2. Tap “-” button in the top-left corner of the app you want to hide.

3. Select “Remove from home screen” in the command prompt menu.

4. (Optional) To hide apps in a folder, tap the folder to reveal the “–” buttons for all the apps in it.

5. Press on your wallpaper or “Finished‘ in the top right corner of your screen. The apps will stop shaking and you can interact with them normally.

You can’t hide widgets the same way you can hide apps. Tap on “–‘ only allows you to remove the widget. Any widgets you remove can be removed with the “+‘ in the top left corner of the screen while editing the home screen.

Hide apps by default

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If you want to hide newly downloaded apps by default, you can do that. Open settingsscroll down and select “home screen,‘ then select ‘App library only” From this page. The App Library is located one screen to the right of your normal home screen, on the far right. Newly downloaded games and apps are now automatically saved here.

Find hidden apps

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You can find all the apps you removed from your iPhone home screen in the app library or in the search tool. The App Library automatically sorts all your apps based on their category (e.g. Social, Sports or Games). It also has a folder that contains apps based on how you use your iPhone and a recently added folder for anything you’ve downloaded.

All you need to use the search tool is a downward swipe on your home screen. Thanks to Siri, you can search for apps, games, specific settings, and more. I love using search to find apps whose location I forgot. It’s also super snappy on my iPhone 13 Pro.

Hide apps from search

You can also prevent an app from showing up when you use search. Scroll the “Siri & Search” menu in Settings until you see the app you want to hide. Then disable the “Show app in search” and the “Show content in search” options to prevent all information from this app from being displayed in search.

Add hidden apps back to the home screen

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It’s okay to change your mind after hiding some apps. How to bring them back:

1. From the app library or search, long press on the app you want to put back on your home screen.

2. Hold and drag the app to the desired location on the home screen.

3. Tap “Finished” button or your wallpaper to set the new home screen layout.

Hide apps from your App Store purchases

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You can also hide apps so they don’t appear in your App Store purchase history. This process will not prevent them from appearing on your home screen without also following the steps above.

1. Open the app store.

2. Tap your profile icon in the upper right corner.

3. Search for apartment you want to hide from your purchase history.

4. Swipe left on the app and select “Hide” Possibility.

Hide iPhone Apps: Frequently Asked Questions

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