How to Hide Apps on iPhone

Your iPhone holds more personal information than most people realize — and sometimes, keeping certain apps out of plain sight is just a smart privacy move.

Maybe you’re planning a surprise and don’t want a shopping app spotted by a curious partner. Maybe you want to stop certain apps popping up every time someone glances at your screen. Or maybe you’ve downloaded something you’d rather not explain to your boss, your kids, or your family.

Whatever the reason, iOS gives you more ways to hide apps than most people know about. Some are quick and simple; others offer genuinely robust privacy. This guide walks you through all of them — clearly, step by step.

Method 1: Use the Hidden Apps Folder (iOS 18+)

If your iPhone is running iOS 18 or later, this is by far the most thorough way to hide an app. Apple’s Hidden Apps feature doesn’t just remove an app from your home screen — it locks it in a protected folder that’s invisible to anyone who doesn’t know it’s there, and requires Face ID or your passcode to open.

When an app is hidden this way, it won’t appear in:

• Homescreen pages
• Spotlight Search
• Notifications
• Siri suggestions
• Your call history (for apps like FaceTime or WhatsApp)

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Long-press the app icon on your home screen until the quick actions menu appears.
2. Tap Require Face ID (or Require Touch ID on older compatible devices).
3. Tap Hide and Require Face ID.
4. Authenticate with Face ID when prompted, then tap Hide App.

Fig 1. Hiding an app on the Home Screen

The app is immediately removed from your home screen and moved to a Hidden folder in your App Library. That folder itself is obscured — to access it, you’ll need to swipe left past all your home screen pages to reach the App Library, scroll to the bottom, and tap the Hidden folder. Face ID will authenticate you before anything inside is revealed.

How to unhide an app

Changed your mind? Here’s how to bring an app back:

1. Open the App Library and tap the Hidden folder.
2. Authenticate with Face ID.
3. Long-press the app you want to unhide.
4. Tap Add to Home Screen, then Unhide App.

Fig 2. Unhiding an app in App Library

Alternatively, go to Settings > Apps > Hidden Apps (this also requires Face ID to view) and manage your hidden apps from there.

Method 2: Remove an App from Your Home Screen

Not on iOS 18 or later? Or just want a no-fuss option that doesn’t require Face ID every time you need to access the app? Removing an app from your home screen is the most straightforward approach. The app remains installed and accessible — it just lives in the App Library rather than on your home screen, keeping it out of your everyday view.

Here’s how:

1. Long-press the app icon until the menu appears.
2. Tap Remove App.
3. Select Remove from Home Screen — not Delete App, which would uninstall it entirely.

Fig 3. Removing an app from Home Screen

The app disappears from your home screen but remains accessible. You can find it by swiping left past all your home screen pages to reach the App Library, or by swiping down from the middle of your screen to open Spotlight Search and typing the app’s name.

Method 3: Hide an Entire Home Screen Page

If you want to tuck multiple apps out of sight at once, you can hide an entire home screen page in a few taps. All the apps on it stay installed — the page just becomes invisible in your everyday view.

1. Long-press an empty area on your home screen until apps start jiggling.
2. Tap the page dots (the small dots at the bottom of the screen).
3. Tap the checkmark beneath any page you want to hide — it turns into an empty circle.
4. Tap Done.

Fig 4. Hiding a Home Screen page

The page disappears from your home screen, but all its apps remain in the App Library. To bring the page back, repeat the steps and re-check the circle.

Take it further with Focus mode

Focus modes (available since iOS 15) add another layer of control. You can link specific home screen pages to a particular Focus — so when your “Work” Focus is active, only your work apps are visible, and everything else disappears until the Focus turns off.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Go to Settings > Focus.
2. Tap the Focus you want to customize, or tap + to create a new one.
3. Tap Customize Screens.
4. Select which home screen pages should be visible while that Focus is on.

Fig 5. Hiding a Home Screen page through Focus Mode

When the Focus activates — whether you trigger it manually or set it to switch on automatically — only those pages will be accessible.

Method 4: Group Apps into Folders

No settings required for this one. Grouping an app into a folder with a neutral name — something like “Utilities” or “Tools” — and moving that folder to a back page of your home screen makes it far less obvious at a glance.

Here’s how to create a folder:

1. Long-press any app icon until jiggle mode starts.
2. Drag it on top of another app — a folder is created automatically.
3. Tap the folder name to rename it something inconspicuous.
4. Move the folder to a less visible home screen page.

Fig 6. Creating a folder and moving it to a new screen

This method has clear limits. The apps are still searchable via Spotlight and visible in the App Library, but it’s a low-effort way to make things less immediately apparent.

Method 5: Hide Built-in Apple Apps with Screen Time

Apple’s Screen Time was designed as a parental control tool, but it has a handy side effect — it can hide certain default Apple apps, like Safari, Mail, FaceTime, and Camera, from your home screen entirely.

Important: Screen Time lets you hide specific built-in Apple apps individually. For third-party apps, it works differently — you can only hide groups of apps above a certain age rating, rather than targeting one specific third-party app.

Here’s how:

1. Go to Settings > Screen Time.
2. If Screen Time isn’t already enabled, tap Turn On Screen Time.
3. Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions and toggle it on.
4. Tap Allowed Apps.
5. Toggle off any built-in apps you want to hide.

Those apps will disappear from your home screen and search results until you re-enable them here.

Fig 7. Disallowing an app in Screen Time

Method 6: Hide Apps from App Store Purchase History

Here’s one people often overlook. Even if an app is hidden from your home screen, it still shows up in your App Store purchase history. Anyone with access to your App Store account can see every app you’ve ever downloaded.

To hide an app from your purchase history:

1. Open the App Store and tap your profile photo or initials in the top-right corner.
2. Tap Apps.
3. Find the app you want to hide.
4. Swipe left on it and tap Hide.

Fig 8. Hiding an app from the App Store history

Method 7: Remove an App from Siri & Search

If you’ve used Method 2, then even after removing an app from your home screen, it can still surface in Spotlight Search results and Siri suggestions — which may give away that it’s installed. To prevent that, adjust the app’s search settings directly.

1. Go to Settings > Apps and scroll to find the app you want to hide from search.
2. Tap the app.
3. Tap Search and toggle off Show App in Search.
4. Go back and tap Apple Intelligence & Siri (or just Siri on some phones).
5. Toggle off Suggest App and Suggestion Notifications.

Fig 9. Removing an app from Search

With all three disabled, the app won’t appear in Spotlight or Siri suggestions, even if it’s installed. This works best as a complement to one of the other methods — on its own, the app would still be visible on your home screen.

A Note on Apps Hidden Without Your Knowledge

Knowing how to hide apps is genuinely useful. But it’s worth understanding that the same methods can be misused. Someone with physical access to your unlocked iPhone — a partner, employer, or anyone else — could use these techniques to conceal a tracking or monitoring app without your knowledge.

In our analysis of nearly 700,000 device scans in 2024, Certo found that over 6% of scanned devices had apps that posed a risk to privacy — including stalkerware and spyware from apps like mSpy, Hoverwatch, and FlexiSpy. These apps are often deliberately obscured using the very methods described in this guide.

If you have any reason to suspect something has been hidden on your phone without your consent, running a scan with a tool like Certo AntiSpy is often the easiest way to know for sure.

Wrapping Up

Hiding apps on your iPhone doesn’t require any special tools or technical know-how — iOS has more built-in privacy options than most people ever discover. The right approach depends on how thoroughly you need the app concealed.

For the strongest privacy available today, the Hidden Apps folder is the clear winner: it locks the app behind Face ID, removes it from search and notifications, and keeps it invisible to anyone browsing your phone. Pair it with hiding from your App Store purchase history (Method 6), and you’ve covered all your bases.

If you’re on an older version of iOS (17 or earlier), the combination of removing an app from your home screen and adjusting its Siri & Search settings gets you a long way there.

FAQs

Will hidden apps still receive notifications?

It depends on how you’ve hidden them. Apps hidden using iOS’s Hide and Require Face ID feature will not send notifications. Apps simply removed from the home screen or placed in folders will continue to notify you as normal.

Can someone still find a hidden app on my iPhone?

Using the basic methods (removing from home screen, folders, hiding pages), the app can still be found via Spotlight Search or the App Library. For the most thorough result, use the Hidden Apps folder and hide it from your App Store purchase history. Even then, the app name remains visible in Settings > Apps > Hidden Apps — though that requires Face ID to open.

Does hiding an app delete it or its data?

No. None of the methods described here delete an app or its data. The app remains fully installed — it’s just less visible. To permanently remove an app and its data, long-press the icon and select Delete App.

Can I hide apps on an iPhone running iOS 17 or older?

Yes. The Remove from Home Screen method, hiding home screen pages, using folders, Screen Time restrictions, and adjusting Siri & Search settings all work on older iOS versions. The Hidden Apps folder with Face ID authentication is exclusive to iOS 18 and later.