Declutter your iPhone interface and eliminate pages and pages of apps that you rarely use. In this guide, we show you how to hide iPhone home screen pages.
Way back in the day when you needed to use iTunes to manage your iPhone, you used to be able to reorder individual home screen pages on your iPhone with a few clicks of the mouse. With iOS 14 and later, Apple has brought that functionality back–but on the iPhone itself.
Not only that, but you can also HIDE entire home screen pages on your iPhone, as well. In this 2023 guide, we’ll tell you how to hide iPhone home screen pages as well as why you might want to.
How Do You Hide Home Screen Page On The iPhone?
So, you want to hide some home screen pages, you say? Or do you just want to quickly reorder them? iOS 14 and later allows you to do just that. Here’s how:
- Long-press anywhere on your home screen where you have a blank space. It doesn’t matter which home screen page you are on as long as there is somewhere to tap and hold. Long-press until all your app icons begin to wiggle on the screen.
- Once your app icons are wiggling on your home screen, tap the home screen page dot icons just above the dock. This is the row of dots that each represent one home screen page. Tapping this will take you to the “Edit Pages” screen.
- On the Edit Pages screen, uncheck any home page you want to hide. Alternatively, recheck it to display it again.
- On the Edit Pages screen, you can also tap and hold the icon for any page and drag it around to reorder your home screen pages.
- After you’re done hiding or reorganizing your home screen pages, tap the Done button on the Edit Pages screen.
And that’s it! You now know how to hide or reorganize your iPhone home screen pages in iOS 14 and later!
Why Would You Want To Hide Or Rearrange Home Screen Pages?
I know–why would you want to hide home screen pages on your iPhone? After all, that’s how you access the apps you have downloaded on it. If an app is on a home screen that’s hidden, how do you launch it?
That’s where the App Library feature of iOS comes in. The App Library is a new page on the iPhone home screen that is always just one swipe to the left of your last home screen page. It was first introduced in iOs 14 in 2020. It doesn’t matter if you have two home screen pages or ten, the App Library will also be just one swipe left past the final one.
So how does the App Library page help the ability to hide other home pages? Because the App Library can’t be hidden. It’s always visible with a swipe left past the final home page. So, even if you hide other home pages, you can still access the apps on them via the App Library page.
So why hide home screen pages at all? Mainly to declutter your iPhone interface and eliminate pages and pages of apps that you probably rarely use.
Now that you can hide home screen pages in iOS 14 and later, you can choose to only display the one or two home screen pages with the apps you use most frequently and then hide the rest. And, as stated, if you need to access apps on those hidden home screen pages–you can always do that from the always-visible App Library page.
How The iPhone Home Screen Changed Since 2020
The iPhone home screen has been a mainstay of iOS since the iPhone debuted in 2007. This is the screen, of course, that shows you your apps displayed in rows of icons. Over the years, the look and feel of the home screen changed very little. But that all changed with iOS 14 back in 2020.
First up, iOS 14 and later allowed you to display widgets right on the home screen right next to your app’s icons. Not only that but iOS 14 also introduced the App Library feature, which is ANOTHER page on your home screen that automatically sorts your apps into categories. These categories are displayed as folders that you tap to see that collection of apps. The categories are also “smart” in that they can show you the apps you’re most likely to want to access next.
But one of the biggest features to come to the home screen thanks to iOS 14 was the ability to completely hide individual home screen pages, as we detailed above. And yes, that feature is still available in iOs 16 and the upcoming iOS 17.
And check out the 3 best ways to organize apps on your iPhone!