If Apple’s stock apps just aren’t cutting it for you anymore, here’s a solution that can give you the illusion of control over your own device. It still doesn’t get rid of the apps — only a miracle or an anti-trust lawsuit could provide you relief for that — but it does hide stock apps so they don’t take up real estate on your phone’s home screen.
The glitch, spotted by iDeviceHelpus, requires a bit of timing so watch the embedded video below before making an attempt. To do this, you will need a full page on your home screen; this means that you must have a full grid of icons and a full dock (the dock can have a many as four icons on the iPhone). If executed perfectly, the glitch would allow you to do things that are usually not possible on the iOS 7 Springboard, such as putting folders inside folders and making folders completely disappear.
Here are some step-by-step instructions for exploiting the glitch:
- Drag one app on top of another to create a folder.
- Quickly drag the folder you want to get rid of on top of the newly created folder. This is the part where timing is necessary. Execute the folder drag as the folder animation starts to kick in.
- Remove the two apps from the new folder.
- Drag out the folder with the stock apps and it disappears completely.
The apps weren’t really deleted. It would show up again once the device has been rebooted. This bug may only last as long as the next iPhone firmware update so take advantage of it now before it goes away.
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