Guide to Hide and Unhide Apps on iPhone

There are so many apps on our smartphones that sometimes it gets difficult to manage them. You might get irritated to scroll your fingers across your home screen to come to the right app that you wish to want and use or you simply don’t want to clog your homescreen. But in any device of iOS 10 or later you can easily hide and unhide the apps according to your choice. This means you can hide apps on iPhone 8, iPhone X or on iPhone 5 or later devices.

While there is no official method on iPhone for hiding apps, smart users across the web have figured out a couple different ways to hide apps on their iPhone. So before you begin to find out as how to do it remind that you have iOS 10 or later then only you can hide apps by Apple, such as iTunes Store, Calculator, Reminders, and more.

Here are few different ways you can hide apps on your iPhone, as well as unhide them later on or  find those hidden apps on your iPhone whenever you want.

If you want to know how to hide apps on iPhone, you can hide stock Apple apps with an iPhone running iOS 10 or later, or you can use iPhone folders to hide apps out of sight and mind, as given below. Also find hidden apps on iPhone using Spotlight search, as well as how to hide apps from Spotlight search.

Hide Apps Using Folders on iPhone

You can have up to twelve pages of apps within folders on iPhone, which means you can hide apps deep inside a folder where someone would really need to search to find the app you’re hiding. The best way to hide apps in a folder is to make the first page of apps those that you’re not trying to hide. If you have more spare apps, you may even want to fill the first two or three pages with apps. The key here is just to flood a folder with a lot of apps and hide a couple apps amongst the others.

Since you’re hiding apps, you’ll probably want to make this folder on your second or third Home screen. Swipe left to access these pages from the main Home screen.

Now tap and hold an app until all your apps wiggle.

If you already have a folder filled with apps, you can simply add the apps you want to hide to that folder or add more apps plus the one you want to hide to the folder so it’s hidden deep inside.

If you do not then drag one of the wiggling apps you want to put in a folder towards another app you want to put in a folder. When the apps overlap, it will zoom in and create a folder.

You can hide an app and add up to seven more apps so that the entire first page of your folder is all apps that you’re fine with people seeing.

Then drag some apps to the right so that a new page within the folder will be created.

You can fill this second page with apps and hide just one or two apps in this page so it’s not obvious.

As said above you can create up to twelve pages in a folder, so long as each page has at least one app. That means you could have a folder with ten pages of apps you only sometimes use, then have the apps you want to hide on the eleventh page.

This method for hiding apps obviously doesn’t completely hide apps, but it sure makes it hard to accidentally come across them. As long as you don’t have any of the apps you want to hide on the first page of the folder, someone will only be able to see the app if they open the folder. But from home screen, the apps will be totally hidden.

Hide Stock iPhone Apps

With iOS 10, Apple finally made it possible to hide stock Apple apps on iPhone. Apple stock apps are hidden the way third-party apps are deleted. But the app is only hidden because it’s technically not completely removed. You can get back the stock apps once they’ve been deleted, which you can do by simply downloading it from the app store.

To hide an Apple stock app on iPhone from Home screen, tap and hold the app you want to hide until all your apps start wiggling.

Tap the X in the corner of the stock Apple apps you want to delete.

Remember, if you decide you need any of these apps in the future, visit the App Store to get them back.

Now Unhide the Apps on iPhone

You can either search through your Home screens and folders looking for apps. But if you have a lot of apps hidden deep inside a folder you can use Spotlight to search it quickly and find a hidden app on your iPhone.

Now from any Home screen, swipe down from the middle of your screen.

This will open Spotlight search.

Type in the name of the app you’re looking for.

If it’s located on your iPhone, it will pop up.

You can also Hide Apps from Spotlight Search

If you can search the app from Spotlight search to quickly find it. You can but also turn off an apps that can be easily found with Spotlight search. Be aware, however, that you won’t be able to search for the app either unless you turn it back on in settings.

So to hide apps from Spotlight search go to Settings>Tap General>Select Spotlight Search.

Under Search Results, you can toggle off any of the apps you want hidden from Spotlight search.

Now try and workout for yourself and see how apps move in hide n seek.