Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile

How to hide and delete a home screen in iOS 15

Jackie Dove
By

Within iOS 14 (and the upcoming iOS 15), there are many elegant and refined ways to customize your iPhone, whether you want to make it more convenient to use or just better serve your needs. One of those useful features is the ability to hide your home screen from prying eyes. You may want to prevent friends, family members, colleagues, or kids from viewing or launching your apps, or you may want to keep your home screen app collection private for other personal reasons.

You have the flexibility of rearranging app icons on the home screen or setting up widgets to make the home screen more useful and inviting. You can move entire pages to reorder them, hide them, or get rid of them altogether.

Recommended Videos

With iOS 14 you can hide or reorder your home screen page. With iOS 15, you can go a step further by completely deleting home screens instead of hiding them. Here’s how to accomplish this easy task.

Related

Hide your home screen

  • Go to the home screen and tap and hold on an icon or the page background to enter the wiggle mode — or tap on Edit Home Screen from the Quick Action pop-up menu — to set the icons wiggling. Alternately, you can long-press a widget or widget stack until it jiggles.
  • Tap the page dots at the bottom of the screen, below the home screen icons, to enter the Edit Pages mode. This indicates how many app screens are available.
  • On the page editing screen, identify the page you want to hide.
  • Tap on the checkmark underneath the page preview to disable and hide that page, and then tap Done.
  • You can also delete a home screen page to remove it permanently by tapping on the minus sign on the upper left corner of the page preview. When you do this, the apps appearing on this page automatically get stored in the App Library.

Reorder home screen pages

The ability to reorder elements on your iOS home screen always made it easier to move icons, and you can easily rearrange which apps you see first when you switch on your phone. Here’s how to change the page order of your home screens.

  • Unlock your iPhone to access the home screen.
  • Tap and hold on any icon or the page background to enter the wiggle mode — or tap on Edit Home Screen to set the icons wiggling.
  • Tap on the page dots located below the home screen icons.
  • On the page editing screen tap and hold on the page you want to move.
  • While pressing on the page icon, drag it to the position where you want it.

This handy functionality for both iOS and iPadOS makes it a lot easier for you to personalize the home screen as needed and on the fly.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jackie Dove
Jackie Dove
Contributor
Jackie is an obsessive, insomniac tech writer and editor in northern California. A wildlife advocate, cat fan, and photo app…
iPhone 15: release date and price predictions, leaks, rumors, and more
iPhone 15 render by 4RMD

As great as the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro are, they're both already a few months old at this point, and the rumors about the iPhone 15 are well underway. We still have several months before the iPhone 15 models drop, though, as Apple usually makes iPhone announcements in the fall. In other words, there's still a lot of time for more rumors to make the rounds -- and make the rounds they will.

We're keeping all of the reports and rumors of the iPhone 15 here in a single place for your convenience, but do remember to keep in mind that these are all still just speculation. Nothing is final until Apple confirms it during an official announcement. Still, a lot of the rumors give us an idea of what to expect each year, which is unfortunate if you like surprises. Here's everything we know about the iPhone 15 so far!
iPhone 15: models

Read more
Your iPhone could steal this Pixel Tablet feature when it gets iOS 17
iPhone 14 Pro with always on display no wallpaper or notifications

With iOS 17 coming in hot for its expected June reveal during Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, iPhone owners are anxious to hear about any big features coming with the update. According to Bloomberg, a major change is coming in the form of a complete interface overhaul for locked devices that effectively turns your iPhone into a smart display.

The new interface will supposedly display a plethora of information like the weather, push notifications, upcoming significant calendar dates, and more. Per the report, this new interface displays automatically when your iPhone is locked and laying horizontally with its screen facing up.

Read more
iMessage was down today, but it’s now back to normal
Apple Messages opened on iPhone 13 Pro Max

Apple's iMessage — one of the biggest reasons to use an iPhone — was having some trouble today.

Apple's official System Status website confirmed that an iMessage issue began at 11:50 a.m. ET. The issue was listed as "ongoing" for multiple hours, with Apple noting that "users may be unable to send or download attachments in iMessage."

Read more