Although you cannot hide all apps from an iPhone, it is possible to make them more difficult to find. Hide apps will clear your home screen so that you don’t see apps you don’t use often. There are many ways to hide apps from your iPhone’s home screen, including Siri suggestions and App Store purchase history.
Folders: How to hide apps on your iPhone
To hide an app from your iPhone, go to your Home Screen to create a folder. Tap and hold an app to hide it. Next, select Edit Your Home Screen. Drag the app onto another app. Next, open the folder by dragging that app into a new window.
- To go to the Home screen on your iPhone, press the Home button at bottom of the screen. iPhone X and newer will require you to swipe up quickly from the bottom of your screen.
- Tap and hold any app. When the app starts to jiggle, or a pop-up menu appears, you can release the button.
- Next, choose to Edit Your Home Screen.
- Next, tap and drag an app on top. The two apps will be added to a new folder created on the iPhone Home Screen. Drag additional apps onto the folder. You can also change the name of the folder by tapping on the name above and creating a new one.
- Next, open your folder and drag the app to a new window in the folder. Drag the app to the right side of the folder. To hide your app, you will need to create a new folder.
- Tap Done. This will appear in the upper-right corner of the screen. This method can be used to hide apps from your Home Screen. However, you can also completely remove them.
How to hide apps using the App Library
You can hide apps from your iPhone by using the App Library. To do this, open the Home Screen and tap the app you wish to hide. Next, select Remove App in the pop-up menu. To hide the app from your App Library, tap Remove from Home Screen.
These steps only work if iOS 14 or higher is installed. You can find our step-by-step guide on how to update iPhone.
- To the Home Screen of your iPhone, click
- Tap and hold the app that you wish to hide.
- Tap Remove app.
- Next, tap Delete from Home Screen. However, this will remove the app from your home screen but you can still access the App Library by swiping left from your home screen. You can then search for hidden apps by using the search bar at top of the App Library screen.
Tap and hold an app to add it to your Home Screen. To add an app to your Home Screen, tap and hold it in the search results.
Notice: All apps on your iPhone will be visible in the App Library. This is the maximum you can hide an application.
You can customize your iPhone Home Screen using iOS 14 in other ways, see our Previous article on how to use them.
Although moving an app to your App Library is a great way to hide it you can also make it harder to find using the search results on your iPhone. Here’s how:
How to hide apps from iPhone’s search results
Scroll down to Settings > Siri & Google Search. To hide apps from search results on your iPhone, click here. Next, tap the name of the app and disable Show Apps in Search. To stop the app from appearing on your phone, you can also disable all other settings.
You might want to disable notifications for an app if you hide it from search results. Here’s how:
How to turn off notifications for an iPhone app
Open the Settings app, and tap Notifications to turn off notifications from an app on your iPhone. Scroll down to the bottom and tap the slider near Allow notifications. When the slider turns gray, you will know that it is off.
How to hide apps from your iPhone’s App store history
To hide an app in your App Store history open the App Store on your iPhone and tap the Today tab.
- Open the App Store app on your iPhone. This app is the one with the blue “A” icon.
- Next, tap the Today tab. This will appear in the lower-left corner.
- Next, tap the profile icon. This icon will be located in the upper-right corner of your screen.
- Tap To purchase.
- Next swipe left on an application and select Hide.
- Select Done. This will appear in the upper-right corner of your screen.
To see hidden app purchases, open App Store and tap your profile icon. Next, select your Apple ID at top of the screen. This is typically your email address. Next, go to Apple ID > hidden purchases.
You can also remove an app completely by following our step-by-step guide on How to delete an iPhone app.
