Your smartphone may have certain apps that give you a glimpse into your private life. Obviously, you wouldn’t want your siblings, kids, or even friends to stumble upon it while you’re handing over your phone for a specific use. Of course, deleting them is not a good option. Therefore, a viable solution is to hide apps on your iPhone and protect it from prying eyes. While there’s no reliable and effective way to hide apps on your iPhone, there are some tricks to keep them secret. This article introduces 6 ways to hide apps on iPhone.
1. Delete the app from your iPhone home screen
If you don’t want the app to appear on your home screen, you can delete it from there and move it to your app library. This is one of the easiest and best ways to hide apps on your iPhone without deleting them. You can use this method if you want to keep some apps out of your sight and only show them when you actually want to access them. For example, if your child spends a lot of time watching her YouTube videos or tends to use social media apps just because they appear on the home screen, this method is helpful.
Here’s how to remove apps from your iPhone’s home screen.
- Long press on the app you want to hide on your iPhone.
- From the quick action menu, Delete the app.
- Then tap Remove from home screen.
- This will move the app to your app library.
- To access intentionally hidden apps, look for or search for them: App library.
- If you want the app to appear again, go to your app library and drag the app back to your home screen.
2. Hide the entire iPhone home screen page
Many users don’t know about this, but you can actually hide multiple apps at once on your iPhone. If you want to hide all apps that appear on your home screen page, you can hide the entire home page instead of individual apps. If a page contains an app that you don’t want to hide, drag the app to another page and make sure the page contains only the apps you want to hide.
- Move the apps you want to hide to a different home screen page. To create a new home screen page, drag the app to the right until you see an empty home screen page.
- Once you have all the apps, Long press on the blank space Touch and hold on the screen until the icon starts shaking.
- Tap 3 dots on the side from the bottom of the screen. This will display all the home screen pages on your iPhone.
- Tap the check mark at the bottom of the home screen page you want to hide.
- Finally, tap end. This will hide multiple apps at once on your iPhone.
- If you want to bring back a hidden homepage, repeat the above steps and tick the hidden homepage.
3. Hide apps from search and Siri suggestions
It’s worth knowing that even if you remove an app from your home screen, it will still appear in search results and Siri suggestions. If you don’t want this to happen, here’s an add-on to the previous method to prevent hidden apps from showing up when you search for them on your iPhone. However, the app will still appear in your App Library. Once you’ve removed the app from your home screen, follow the steps below to hide it from Siri and search.
- open settings app On your iPhone, visit Siri and search section.
- Then scroll down until you find the app you want to hide.
- Tap the app to toggle it off Show apps in search, displayed on the home screen, and Suggest an app.
- Once you’ve done this, your app will no longer appear in Siri suggestions or search results.
4. Hide apps purchased from the App Store
It’s not common for someone to see your purchase history on the App Store, but things can change if you have Family Sharing enabled on your device. If you use Family Sharing, family members can see their purchases and redownload them. If you don’t want anyone to see your App Store purchase history, you can hide apps in the App Store.
it’s worth knowing that This method won’t hide the app from your home screen, search results, Siri Suggestions, or anywhere else on your device. It just disappears from your purchases list, so no one in your family can see it through Family Sharing.
Here’s how to hide an app from your App Store purchase history.
- open app store Tap your profile picture or initials in the top right corner.
- tap I bought it. This will show you a list of free and paid apps on your iPhone.
- Next, swipe left on the app you want to hide on your iPhone.
- hit hide button. Repeat this for any other apps you want to hide.
- tap end And you’re sorted.
If you want to unhide or view apps you’ve purchased on your iPhone, here’s how.
- go to app store Tap your profile.
- Then tap your Apple ID at the top.
- Now, tap hidden purchase and Redisplay App.
5. Hide apps on iPhone using Screen Time
Another way to hide apps on your iPhone is to enable Screen Time settings. Yes, Screen Time offers built-in parental controls to manage or hide all the apps you’ve downloaded to your iPhone. This trick will help you hide certain iOS apps from your nosy friends or smart kids who often have their phones in their hands. Let me explain how.
- Open setting On your iPhone, go to Screening time section.
- Now, tap Content and Privacy Restrictions. Please check the switching of Content and privacy restrictions is turned on.
- Then tap Allowed apps. This will bring up stock iOS apps like Mail, Camera, FaceTime, and more.
- To hide a stock app on your iPhone, simply turn off the toggle for that app.
- To change it back, repeat the steps above and turn on the toggle.
Now, this method is only useful if you want to hide pre-installed or stock apps on your iPhone. What if I want to hide third-party apps? Fortunately, you can do that too. However, please note that you cannot use Screen Time to hide individual apps. Rather, you can hide apps based on age ratings. For example, you can hide iPhone apps that have an age rating of 17 years or older.
- go to Settings -> Screen Time -> Content Restrictions.
- Double check that the toggle is turned on again. Content and privacy restrictions are enabled.
- tap Content restrictions and select App.
- You can then choose to hide apps based on age ratings.
- If you want to hide all the apps you have downloaded on your iPhone, Please don’t allow it. We recommend selecting this option only if you want to actively protect all apps on your iPhone. All iOS apps are hidden, leaving only the essentials like Phone, Settings, and more.
6. Hide iPhone apps using folders
Finally, there’s an old-school way to hide apps on your iPhone without deleting them: using the iPhone folder. You can organize apps into folders and delete them from view immediately. It doesn’t hide iOS apps, but it does make it easier to prevent them from appearing. This is very useful if you want your child to believe that they don’t have a particular app on their iPhone. Also, when an app is buried deep in a folder, you automatically tend to use it less.
To hide an iPhone app in a folder, press and hold the app, then drag and drop it onto another app. The two apps will be combined into her one folder. If you don’t want an app to appear, drag it to another page within the folder. Don’t forget to name the folder in a way that doesn’t remind you of hidden apps.
That’s all our instructions on how to hide iPhone apps on iPhone. We hope these methods will help you protect your iOS apps and keep naughty kids and cleaver siblings guessing. How did you hide your iPhone apps? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.