How to clean up a messy iPhone Home Screen
Updated
Most cluttered Home Screens are years of downloads landing wherever there was space. These are the built-in iPhone tools for cleaning up, from gentle to drastic.
Take apps off the Home Screen without deleting them
- Touch and hold the app.
- Tap Remove App, then Remove from Home Screen.
The app stays installed with all its data, and you can find it any time in the App Library or by searching.
Find and delete apps you don't use
- Open Settings > General > iPhone Storage. It lists every app with its size and when you last used it.
- Tap an app you don't need and choose Delete App. Or on the Home Screen, touch and hold it and tap Remove App > Delete App.
Deleting removes the app's data from the iPhone. You can reinstall the app from the App Store, but not always its data.
Hide whole pages
- Touch and hold an empty part of the Home Screen until the apps jiggle.
- Tap the row of dots above the Dock.
- Untick the pages you want to hide, then tap Done. Their apps stay in the App Library.
Stop new apps landing on your pages
Go to Settings > Home Screen & App Library (just Home Screen on older iOS versions) and choose App Library Only. New downloads then skip your Home Screen.
Start over: reset the Home Screen layout
- Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset.
- Tap Reset Home Screen Layout and confirm.
Apple's built-in apps go back to their original places and your other apps are listed alphabetically after them. Your folders are removed, but no apps or data are deleted. There's no undo, so it's a last resort.
Clean up faster on your PC with WiggleGrid
WiggleGrid shows every page side by side on your Windows PC, which makes a big clean-up much quicker than doing it one page at a time. Unlike a reset, you keep control of where everything goes, and your old layout is saved as a snapshot.
- Download WiggleGrid on your Windows 10 or 11 PC and create a free account.
- Connect your iPhone with a USB cable, unlock it and tap Trust if it asks. If Windows needs Apple's free Apple Devices app, WiggleGrid points you to it.
- Run the free compatibility check. It tells you whether your iPhone model and iOS version are supported before you pay anything.
- Select the apps you rarely use and move them off the Home Screen into the App Library, sort the rest into pages and folders, and set up the Dock.
- Optionally tick apps you no longer want and delete them. WiggleGrid always asks you to confirm first.
- Click Review changes to see a plain list of everything that will change, then Apply to iPhone. WiggleGrid saves a snapshot of your current layout first and reads the iPhone back afterwards to confirm it matches.
Applying changes is a one-time $19.99 purchase. WiggleGrid never erases your iPhone, doesn't use iCloud and never asks for your Apple ID password. Don't like the result? Restore the snapshot in one click.
Hiding pages is still done on the iPhone.
Try it on your PC, free
Download WiggleGrid and run the free compatibility check. Pay $19.99 once, only if your iPhone passes.
Windows 10 and 11 · USB cable · No iCloud or Apple ID password needed