How to Hide Apps and Pages From Home Screen on iPhone

iOS 14 brings significant changes to the iPhone home screen. Now you can place widgets among other app icons, create smart stacks of auto-rotating widgets, use the app library to check installed apps at a glance, and more. But did you also know that you can hide apps – and even entire pages – from the Home screen?

Previously, you had to put an app in a folder – or worse, delete it – if you wanted to hide it from prying eyes. But with iOS 14, you can instantly remove apps from the Home screen without any of that.

Best of all, you can reduce home screen clutter by quickly hiding unwanted home screen pages as well. So without further ado, let’s see how you can do all of this below.

Note: We used screenshots from an iPhone running iOS 14 Public Beta 4. You may see slight differences in the following public beta releases or in the stable version of iOS 14.

Hide apps in the app library

If your iPhone is running iOS 14 or later, you can easily remove any app from the Home screen by hiding it in the app library.

Start with a long press on the app. In the pop-up menu that appears, tap Remove app.

You should then see a confirmation prompt – tap the Move to app library option (or Remove from Home screen option) to remove the app from the Home screen.

Note: The Remove from Home screen option only appears for some apps that you cannot remove from your iPhone – Camera, Settings, Safari, etc.

You then have two ways to access the application. The first method is to use the app library: go to the final home screen page, then swipe left to view it.

You can then tap the app in the appropriate app category to open it. If you can’t see it at a glance, just expand the category to reveal it.

You can also use the iPhone’s search feature to locate the app: swipe down from any page on the home screen to view search, enter the app name , and then tap Go.

iOS 14 also allows you to hide new apps that you install by adding them directly to the app library only. Go to Settings> Home screen and tap App library only to do so.

Whenever you want to view an app, go to the app library and long press the app icon. Next, tap Add to Home Screen. You can also drag the app out of the app library and onto the Home screen to view it.

Hide home screen pages

Does your iPhone have many apps installed? If so, you can quickly hide home screen pages to reduce clutter. Once again, your iPhone must have iOS 14 or later installed to do this.

Long press a vacant area of ​​the home screen to start shaking it. Next, tap on the strip of dots – just above the iPhone dock – that shows the number of home screen pages.

On the Edit Pages screen that appears, uncheck the Home screen pages that you want to hide. However, you must keep at least one home screen page visible. Tap Done to exit the Edit Pages screen.

You can still access apps from any hidden Home screen page, through the app library or the iPhone search feature.

Each time you want to view a page, display the Edit Pages screen again, select the page (s), and then tap Done.

Tip: hide apps with screen time

You can also use Screen Time to hide a limited number of native apps on any iPhone running iOS 12, iOS 13, iOS 14 or later.

Start by going to Settings> Screen Time> Content & Privacy Restrictions> Allowed Apps. Then turn off the buttons next to the app you want to hide. Then exit the home screen.

Note: If this is your very first time using Screen Time, you will need to go through several startup screens to configure the feature.

You can’t access apps that you hide with Screen Time (through the app library or search) unless you authorize them again on your iPhone. To do this, return to the Allowed applications panel in Screen time.

If you share your iPhone with other people, you might want to secure Screen Time with a password to prevent them from changing your restrictions without permission.

Private and clutter-free

IOS 14’s ability to hide apps and pages finally helps you solve privacy issues and home screen clutter on iPhone. Don’t forget to check out other exciting additions and improvements in iOS 14, such as the new Translate app, the revamped Messages app, or Picture-in-Picture mode, while you’re at it.