If you have dozens of applications installed on your iPhone, your home screen is likely split across four or five different pages. When you hand your phone to a colleague to show them a photo, or give it to a child to play a specific game, you might not want them swiping through your other pages and seeing your banking apps, dating apps, or private messaging folders.
Instead of manually moving every sensitive app into a complicated folder structure, iOS allows you to completely hide entire home screen pages with a few simple taps.
How to Hide a Home Screen Page
Before you begin, ensure that all the apps you want to hide are grouped together on a single, specific page.
- Unlock your iPhone and navigate to your primary home screen.
- Tap and hold your finger on any empty space (between the app icons) until the icons begin to jiggle. This indicates you have entered “Edit Mode.”
- Look at the very bottom of the screen, just above your permanent app dock. You will see a small pill-shaped bar containing several dots (each dot represents a home screen page).
- Tap the row of dots.
- Your iPhone will zoom out, displaying a grid overview of every active home screen page.
- Beneath each page, you will see a small circle with a checkmark inside it. Tap the checkmark beneath the page you wish to hide. The checkmark will disappear, and the page will visually dim.
- Tap Done in the top-right corner of the screen.
- Tap Done one more time to exit Edit Mode.
How Hidden Apps Function
The apps located on the hidden page have not been deleted, nor are they restricted. If you swipe left on your home screen, you will simply skip directly over the hidden page as if it never existed.
However, the apps are still fully accessible if you know where to look. They will still appear if you swipe all the way to the right to access the App Library, and they will still appear if you search for them directly using the Spotlight Search bar.
How to Unhide the Page
When you want your page back, the process is instantly reversible.
- Tap and hold on an empty space to re-enter Edit Mode.
- Tap the row of dots at the bottom of the screen.
- Locate the dimmed page in the grid view and tap the empty circle beneath it to restore the checkmark.
- Tap Done.
The page, and every app on it, will instantly return to its exact original position on your home screen.