You can now hide apps on your iPhone and iPad

Estimated reading time: 271 minutes

As a Screen Time feature, hiding apps on your iPhone and iPad conceals apps from other users to avoid their usage. The feature requires iOS 18 but there are some rumours on how iPhone users can get around and use it even though they have an older iOS on their device.

How to Hide an App on iPhone or iPad

If your iPhone or iPad is updated to iOS 18 (or iPadOS 18) or higher then the process of hiding the desired app is quite easy. First, locate the app either it’s being located on the Home screen, the App Library or by performing a Spotlight search.

Now press and hold the app’s icon, then press on “Require Face ID” (or “Require Touch ID” on an iPad).

You’ll be prompted whether you just want to “Force Face ID” or do you want to “Lock and Force Face ID.” The first will merely freeze the app (it will remain on your device menu while the second will end the app but you will need to unlock it using your face or fingerprint.

Hiding an app is pretty aggressive and what it does is that it buries an application so you don’t receive any notice from that app even calls from apps such as Skype or Teams. They are not to be found as an icon anywhere and you can not search for them using spotlight search, also they do not appear under Settings > Apps.

The only place you will still see the app icon is under the individual settings panels identified in Settings > Privacy. Therefore, if a hidden app has requested permission to your location, it will be here (and current permission level) listed under the “Location Services” sub-menu.

Accessing Hidden Apps on Your iPhone or iPad

The apps which are put ‘off-screen’ will then create a new area in the App Library that you can access. To open these apps, scroll horizontally to get to the App Library and then scroll to down get to the bottom of the screen.

Lastly, there will be the “Hidden” category to which nothing is assigned and which is unobtrusive by default. To open it, you just tap on it and enter your ID through Face ID or Touch ID to view your complete list of stealth apps.

From here you can tap and hold an app icon and then choose “Don’t Require Face ID” (or “Don’t Require Touch ID” on an iPad) to unhide the app. You can then, add it back to your Home Screen so that it can easily accessed whenever it is needed.

“Hide” Apps By Deleting the Home Screen Icon (iOS 17 and Earlier)

If you do not wish to remove an application completely or your device does not support iOS 18 or iPadOS 18, you can move an application to the App Library and you will be able to search for the application and add it to your home screen. It will be there if someone rescues this menu or types it on Spotlight, but it is hidden from the home screen.

To do this, right extend the tap on an icon of the application on your home screen. Clicking on the ‘Remove App’ and then choosing ‘Remove from Home Screen’ will suffice. You can select to have a new application icon work in your Application Library rather than on the home screen of your iPhone or iPad (a perfect way to prevent cluttering of the home screen).

If you go this route, there are a few other tricks you might want to use:

Exclude Apps from Search and Siri Suggestions

Siri Suggestions are found on the Today view and in the vicinity of the Spotlight search bar on your iPhone or iPad. If you use search frequently to find apps (which you should, easily accessible on your home screen via the pull-down search bar), the app that you want to hide may pop up every once in a while. Or it may appear when you look for the other applications.

Siri will always suggest an app that you often use most of the time when you activate it. Apple’s assistant will also learn from the app and even recommend stuff across other applications. When you press ‘Share’ on one app, you get a list of suggestions that Siri has learnt over time including for instance.

Navigate to Settings > Apps; you will be taken to a list of the apps installed on your device and the one you want “to hide” will be among them.

Go to the app’s settings and also turn off “Siri”, turning off “suggest app” and “suggestion notifications”. If you would prefer to completely bury the app, you might wish to turn off “Learn from this app.”

Under the app’s settings, tap “Search” and disable “Show App in Search” and “Show Content in Search” to remove the app from Spotlight listings entirely. You’ll need to find the app manually to launch it if you go this route.

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Disable App Notifications

An app’s notifications still appear even after you exclude it from Siri and search suggestions. Head to Settings > Notifications, and then scroll down until you find the app. Tap it, and then disable the “Allow Notifications” option to prevent the app from showing any notifications on your phone.

You can also choose to hide notifications from the lock screen and disable banners. If you leave “Notification Center” active, you’ll only see an app’s notifications when you manually check for them. If you’re serious about hiding an app, it’s best to disable all the settings.

Hide Apps from Your App Store History

If you hide or even delete an app from your iPhone or iPad, Apple’s App Store will still remember that you downloaded it. It’ll appear in your App Store purchases list, even if the app was a free download.

The good news is that you can hide all apps (free and paid) from your history. To see a list of previously purchased apps, launch the App Store and tap your user icon in the top-right corner. From there, select “Apps” to see a list of “All” and “Not on this iPhone.”

You can now scroll through a list of the free and paid apps you previously downloaded. To hide one, swipe left on it and tap “Hide” to make it disappear. You can also search for any specific apps you want to hide using the field at the top of the screen.

Once you hide an app, it disappears. If you want to download it again, you’ll have to tap “Get” and reauthorize it, rather than tapping the iCloud download icon as per other purchased apps.

Source: How-to-geek