Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. Guides

How to use iOS 14’s App Library: Tidy your home screen

By

The App Library is one of iOS 14‘s most useful features. It’s basically a drawer for all of your iPhone’s apps, tucked away after the last page of the home screen. This doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary on its own, but what it means is that you can remove apps from your home screen, resting safe in the knowledge that they’ll still be discoverable via the App Library. This is great if there are a bunch of apps you hardly ever use since moving them to the App Library will mean that you can tidy up your home screen and display only the apps you really need.

Recommended Videos

In celebration of this helpful feature, we explain how to use iOS 14’s App Library. We detail how to remove apps from your home screen and then find them in the App Library. We also explain how to return apps from your App Library to the home screen, how to delete apps permanently from the App Library, and also how to change the default location of downloaded apps.

Related

How to use iOS 14’s App Library

Even before you remove apps from your home screen, you can still use iOS 14’s App Library to find every app on your iPhone. To access the App Library, swipe beyond the very last page of the home screen.

The App Library displays all of your apps, so you can scroll down to find the one you’re looking for. Alternatively, you can simply tap the App Library search bar and then start typing the name of the app. The App Library will present apps before you finish typing an app’s complete name.

How to remove apps from the home screen (and find them in iOS 14’s App Library)

On its own, the App Library doesn’t make a massive difference, since even before iOS 14 you could search for apps by swiping down from the middle of the home screen. However, the App Library lets you remove apps from your home screen, since before iOS 14, you couldn’t do this without deleting apps altogether.

You can remove apps from your home screen by doing the following:

Step 1: Tap and hold on the app you want to remove. Once the Edit sub-menu appears, tap Remove App.

Step 2: Tap Move to App Library.

Repeat this process for any other apps you want to relegate from the home screen to the App Library. Once you’ve finished removing apps in this way, you can still find the moved apps in the App Library.

To do this, simply swipe past the final page of the home screen. As above, either scroll down to find the desired app, or find it via the App Library search bar.

How to move apps from the App Library back to the home screen

Let’s assume you want to move an app from your App Library back to the home screen. Here’s what you do:

Step 1: Swipe to the App Library. Scroll down and find the app you want to return to the home screen (you can also find it via the App Library search bar). Tap and hold it, until the sub-menu appears.

Step 2: Tap Add to home Screen.

It’s as simple as that, and obviously you can repeat this process to add as many apps as you’d like.

You can also delete apps from your iPhone using the App Library. Again, find the desired app in the Library, tap and hold on it, and then tap Delete App.

Changing where newly downloaded apps are located

One last thing: You can also change your iPhone’s settings so that apps you download from the App Store get sent to the App Library, rather than to your home screen. To do this, simply go to Settings > Home Screen. From there, choose either Add to Home Screen or App Library Only. 

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Chandler
Simon Chandler
Mobile Writer
Simon Chandler is a journalist based in London, UK. He covers technology and finance, contributing to such titles as Digital…
Google’s Gemini AI app gets a wider release. Is your phone on the list?
Google Gemini app on Android.

More people can now use and enjoy the Google Gemini AI app on their smartphone, as the company has expanded the list of regions where the Android version of the app is available through the Google Play Store. Specifically, it has launched the Android app in the U.K. and Europe, opening the service up far beyond its start in the U.S., where it was released in February.

What’s more, Google says Gemini will soon be available to iPhone owners, as the AI chatbot will appear on iOS in the next few weeks. It won’t be a standalone app though, as Gemini will instead work through the official Google app that can be downloaded now through the Apple App Store.

Read more
Google is making it easier to ditch your iPhone for an Android phone
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and iPhone 15 Pro in hand.

Switching phones is never a smooth process, even if you’re switching between two different Android phones. However, when you’re trying to switch from an iPhone to Android or vice versa, it can be extra complicated -- and you can lose data and apps that you rely on. This is especially the case with Apple-to-Android transfers because the iPhone has a much stronger ecosystem lock-in with things like iMessage, iCloud backups, and exclusive apps like Overcast and Hyperlapse.

The good news is that with its Data Transfer Tool (also called Pixel Migrate on Pixel devices), Google may be trying to mitigate some of the phone-switching problems that arise -- specifically, losing access to your Live Photos. According to an APK teardown from Android Authority, Google’s Data Transfer Tool will finally resolve the problem of migrating iOS Live Photos to Android. It will do this by converting them over as Motion Photos.

Read more
Here’s how iOS 18 could change the way you use your iPhone
The lock screen on the Apple iPhone 15 Plus.

It seems the long-overdue Siri overhaul will finally arrive at WWDC in just over a week from now, and the digital assistant will embrace AI trickery in all its forms. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s planned upgrades for Siri will deeply integrate with on-device functions at the OS level and with the installed apps, too.

“The new system will allow Siri to take command of all the features within apps for the first time,” the report says. The most notable capability is that Siri will only require voice prompts to interact with apps, thanks to a major change in the AI architecture powering it and putting large language models in command, just the way Gemini or ChatGPT draw their own skills from such models.

Read more