How To Hide Apps on iphone and Android

How to hide apps on your iPhone's home screen and search function

You can hide apps on your iPhone by storing them deep in a folder, and you can also prevent search results from appearing for installed apps.

• Apple doesn't provide an official way to hide apps, but you can store iPhone apps you want to hide in a folder, shielding it from view.
• iPhone folders support many "pages" of apps, so you can store "private" apps on back pages in a folder.
• You can also configure your iPhone so that it isn't possible to search for installed apps.

Apple makes it easy to manage the apps on your iPhone. You can reorganize your apps onto different pages and folders, and outright delete the ones you never use (except for a handful of built-in apps that are an essential part of the operating system).

Unfortunately, one of the things that Apple does not allow you to do is to hide an app, or otherwise make it private, so only you can find it.

That said, there are some simple workarounds you can employ to keep certain apps hidden from view. That's great if your goal is to tuck apps you never use out of sight so they aren't in your way.

And if you have apps that you want to keep others from seeing, you can take some steps to hide them – but the ruse will not be perfect. A determined detective will be able to find "hidden" apps if they know what to look for.

All that said, here are some strategies for hiding apps from view on your iPhone.

Hide apps in folders on your home screen

Rather than keeping all of your apps in plain view – and relatively disorganized, at that – you can move some or all of your apps into folders. This isn't quite the same thing as hiding apps outright, of course, but it does remove apps from immediate view.

And you can further hide apps by moving them beyond the first page of a folder. A folder can display up to nine apps per page, so an effective strategy for hiding an app is to fill the first page with apps you use frequently, and storing apps you want to keep out of sight on page two, three, or more.

To move an app between pages in a folder, use the same technique as moving an app anywhere on your iPhone: Tap and hold the app until it starts to jiggle. Then drag it to the right edge of a folder to bury it deeper in a back-page of the folder; drag it to the left edge to bring it forward towards the front of the folder.