How to delete apps on iPhone that are hidden

Have you hidden the apps from your iPhone and can’t find them? Do you want to learn how to delete apps on iPhone that are hidden or you can’t find? Click here to find the four best ways or methods to do this. Privacy is a major factor in using an iPhone. Sometimes you don’t want anyone to find your iPhone’s contents. Maybe it is a messaging app like WhatsApp or a social media app like Instagram. If you have a habit of leaving your phone open for a long duration of time, then you may rethink some of your steps for privacy.

Not having some based boundaries for your iPhone can potentially lead to a leak of private data. Even if it is not as serious as data threats or privacy breaches. Sometimes you just don’t want people to know what apps you use in general. If you have a nephew who pries around your phone searching for games like mine do then you should think about hiding some of your apps.

Fortunately, Apple has introduced in iOS 14 the app library. With the introduction of the App Library, you can hide apps from the Home Screen. Amazing isn’t it. You might want to use this feature to the fullest and might hide some of your important apps from your home screen. But what if you want to delete those apps? How do you find them? Where will you look for them to be deleted?

Well, in this article we will discuss this topic in utter detail. We will tell you four amazing steps on how you can find the hidden apps of your iPhone and how you can delete them very easily. Let us see the details on this.

What is App Library?

Before we continue, let us learn about the App Library. The App Library is a feature introduced in iOS 14 which was to keep all your apps smartly organized in a single location. This helps you get quick access to all your favorite apps in a flash. The App Library manages the app not by alphabetically or storage size, but by categories like Suggestions, Recently Added, Creativity, Social, Utilities, etc.

This helps you get an organized order of your apps according to your preference. Not only it is pre-organized as set orders. But they are also organized according to your usage. The apps that you like or that you use frequently are shown at the top of the screen in the Suggestions folder. You can create your folders inside the App Library and organize them according to your liking. There is a handy search bar that can assist you in the fast searching of your apps if you are in a hurry. You can drag apps from the App Library to your favorite home screen page whenever you like.

With the introduction, iPhones were equipped with the feature of hiding apps or pages. This works like you can hide your apps from the home screen of your iPhone. You may choose to do so if you want to hide the unnecessary apps that you don’t use from the home screen. To make your navigation and flow fluid and short. You can also choose to do so if you want to hide them from prying eyes on your iPhone.

How can I hide my apps?

Can You Hide Apps On iPhone? So let us tell you how you can quickly hide the apps that you don’t want on your iPhone’s home screen. There are two ways of hiding your apps on the home screen. They are that you can hide complete pages or you can hide individual apps from the home screen. Let us see both the steps to hide the apps from the home screen:

For Individual Apps

Steps:

1. Find the app that you want to hide on the home screen.
2. Press and hold on to the app icon until a pop-up screen appears.
3. Select the “Remove App” tab inside the menu.
4. Tap on the “Remove from Home Screen” tab.
5. The app should be hidden from the home screen and available on the App Library.

This will hide the individual app from the home screen but it will remain in the App Library. You can search for the app and it will be shown in the library. If you want to get the app back then you can drag and drop it from the App Library.

For Complete Pages

Steps:

1. Organize all the apps that you want to hide on a single page of your home screen.
2. Press and hold on to the empty area of the home screen, until the apps start shaking.
3. Click on the dots given below the home screen.
4. A thumbnail of all the pages of your home screen will be shown with checkmarks under them.
5. Uncheck the pages that you want to hide.
6. Click on a space twice to confirm the selection.

This will hide the complete page from which you have stored all the apps that you wanted to be hidden. You can use this technique for hiding multiple pages and getting access to the App Library very fast. If you want to get the apps back then you can again drag and drop them from the library or you can Re-check them from the thumbnails.

How to delete apps on iPhone that are hidden

After hiding the apps and removing them from your eyes you might want to delete them because they have no use to you anymore. They can also take some storage off your iPhone which is always a very good thing to do. So let us see the different techniques to delete the hidden apps from your iPhone:

Method 1. Deleting a hidden app from the Spotlight of your iPhone:

The Spotlight is the quick access menu that iPhone provides you to do your task instantly. You can very easily use the spotlight to delete apps from your iPhone. Let us see the steps of how you can use the spotlight to delete a hidden app:

Steps:

1. From your Home screen swipe down a finger in the middle of your screen.
2. A Spotlight quick access menu should open with a search bar at the top.
3. Search the name of the hidden app.
4. The app you searched will appear, press and hold on to the app until a pop-up appears.
5. Click on the “Delete app” tab, and select “Delete” from the pop-up that appears.

By following these steps, you will very easily delete the hidden apps of your iPhone with the use of the Spotlight feature. This is the quickest and the most effective way of deleting any app or any hidden app. But for some cases, if it doesn’t work you can check the other methods that are given below.

Method 2. Deleting a hidden app from the Settings of your iPhone:

The Settings app holds the list of all the apps that you have installed on your iPhone. No matter if you have hidden your apps from the home screen, they will always appear in the iPhone storage inside the settings app. Let us see the steps of how you can use the setting app to delete the hidden app of your iPhone.

Steps:

1. Open the Settings app from the home screen.
2. Swipe down until you see the “General” tab. Select it.
3. Click on the” iPhone Storage” tab in the General menu.
4. You will find the list of apps that are installed on the iPhone. Find the app that you want to delete and click on it.
5. Inside the app details, click on the “Delete app” button and confirm your delete.

This is how you can successfully be able to delete your hidden apps with the help of the Settings app. This will be a sure and final way of deleting your hidden apps. Take note that the iPhone Storage menu can take some time to show all the apps as it takes time to compute and calculate all the storage. You can also note the amount of storage you gained after deleting the hidden app.

Method 3. Deleting a hidden app from the App Library of your iPhone

Now let us see some techniques that are back to basic. Now that you know how to hide your apps and how you can find them on the App Library. You can also use the App Library to delete the apps. All the hidden apps can be found on the App Library. It should be available in the folders of the library. You will have to find the app by navigating through the library because you will not be able to use the search bar given in the App Library to delete the app.

Why? You ask. Well, you see, the search bar in-app library is different from the one in the Spotlight. It does not allow you to do any extra pop-up functions like deleting the app. If you search the hidden app in the App Library search bar, it will be shown in the result but you will not be able to do anything to it other than open the app or shift it to the home screen.

If you still want to use the search bar then you can shift the app to the home screen and then delete it from there. Now that, it is cleared up let us see the steps to delete a hidden app from the App Library of the iPhone:

Steps:

1. From the Home screen of your iPhone, swipe left until you get to the app library.
2. Find the hidden app that you want to be deleted.
3. Long press on the app and a pop-up will appear.
4. Press the “Delete App” button and confirm your deletion by pressing the delete button.

Doing this will delete the hidden app from the App Library and will remove it from your iPhone.

Method 4. Deleting a hidden app from the App Store of your iPhone

If you have apps on the App store that you may have hidden in the past few months and they are now getting unnecessary updates that you don’t want then you can use this technique very efficiently. Using this you can delete those apps very easily. Let us see the steps of how you can delete a hidden app from the App Store of your iPhone:

Steps:

1. Open the App Store from the home screen of your iPhone.
2. Click on your profile. Scroll down to find all the Updates.
3. If you have recently updated the hidden app then search the app in the “Updated Recently” sections. Otherwise check the “Updates” section to find the app.
4. When you find the app then slide the app to the left and you’ll see a delete button appear.
5. Press on it and confirm your deletion by clicking on the Delete button.

This way you will be able to delete all the hidden apps from your App store, which you have updated in the past or that may have received an update recently.

Conclusion

After reading this article, I hope you will be able to delete all the apps that you may have hidden very easily and without any trouble. If you still face any issues related to this topic then you can check out the Frequently Asked Questions given below to satisfy your questions.

FAQs