How to: Delete Apple’s Apps from your iPhone - aka “the Hidden 10th iPhone app screen”
OK, I teased briefly about the Hidden 10th iPhone app screen that would allow you to get past the 148 app limit on the iPhone, and I will reveal its secrets here in a tip I know many of you have been waiting for someone to tell you – namely, How to delete Apple’s official apps from the iPhone?
We all know that holding down an application’s icon on the iPhone will cause them all to wiggle – thus allowing you to rearrange the icons on your screen as well as delete 3rd party apps from your iPhone (by clicking that the little “X” icon in the corner). Apple’s official iPhone apps, however (Calculator, iTunes, Stocks, Phone, etc.), lack this button, and until now most of you likely just figured Apple’s default set of apps were undeletable – destined to stay on your home screens forever, taking up valuable real estate and mocking you with their “We ain’t going anywhere” smugness.
Well, this is not entirely true, as I have discovered that yes, removing these apps IS possible (sort of), and it involves invoking the iPhone’s hidden 10th Home page. Here’s how to do it:
OK, first things first. In order to get rid of an Apple-sanctioned app, you will need
1 - An iPhone
2 - A Wi-Fi connection and iTunes account
3 - About 5-10 minutes of time
3 - 9 pages of apps on your iPhone
What?! Yes, you read right. You see, the main trick in deleting Apple’s apps is that you need to first fill the final page (page 9) on your iPhone with applications. This isn’t as hard as it sounds as there are thousands of free iPhone apps on the app store now that you can temporarily use to pad out your iPhone (remember, you can always delete them later) and you needn’t have 9 FULL pages of apps. (In fact, you can in theory do it with as few as 25 – you can have just 1 app per page for the first 7 pages – but the more apps you have the more apps you can delete). Only the last page (page 9) needs to be full, and page 8 should be mostly full if possible.
So, here’s how to do get rid of Apple’s apps:
Step 1: Move any Apple-branded apps you do NOT want on your iPhone (such as the iTunes Store, the Camera, the Phone (who needs a Phone on their iPhone?), Weather etc. to the 9th page.
Step 2: Arrange the apps so that the ones you wish to delete are the bottom right-most apps on the page
Above: By dragging Urban Spoon from page 8 to Page 9, I have moved the “Phone” app to the hidden page 10.Step 3: Now, the key to deleting these apps is that you are not really deleting them so much as you are “banishing” them to the hidden 10th page on the iPhone. Kind of the iPhone version of Superman’s Phantom Zone, this 10th page is a virtual storage area that Apple includes for holding apps that you download if you happen to already have all 148 spaces (9 pages) full of apps. In order to banish apps to the Phantom Zone, you simply need to start “pushing” the icons off the screen. As you may have noticed in the past, when you drag an application from one page to another, it pushes all the apps on that page down to the right 1 space. Well, that’s what we are going to do here. Begin by making sure Page 8 has at least 1 more application on it than the number of apps you want to delete on page 9. Now, press and hold an application on page 8, causing the apps to wiggle, and then begin dragging applications from page 8 to page 9. As you release each application, you will see the bottom right-most app disappear. Keep moving apps over, bumping apps to the hidden 10th page until you have gotten rid of all the apps you do not want.
Above: Who needs Phone, Stocks, Weather, Contacts, Calendar, App Store or iTunes?
Above: You can now consolidate pages.Step 4: You can now rearrange your apps the way you’d like, consolidate pages back to a more normal number, and the Apple apps will not reappear.
OK, so, how do I get them back? Do I have to restore?
Oh, so now you wish you COULD use your iPhone as a phone, or you deleted “Camera” and now you want to take a picture? OK, well the good news is you need not restore your iPhone to get your apps back. All you have to do is power the iPhone off (hold the sleep button on top of the iPhone until the “Slide to Power Off” message appears, turn it off, then turn it back on (pressing the same button). All the banished official Apple apps will reappear back on the first available open apps slots on your iPhone. The only caveat would be if you had a full 148 apps on your iPhone, and no open slots for them to return into, in which case you’d need to delete a few apps and power off/on the iPhone to get them back. A sync in iTunes will also bring them back.
Above: Just turn your iPhone off and on or sync it to make the hidden apps reappear.
So, why would I want to do this?
Well, normally you wouldn’t, but there are some situations where you might. Number one is of course to screw with your friend’s iPhone by “deleting” the Phone app (incidentally, you can still receive calls when the phone app is hidden, and you could in theory make them if you have a double-tap of the Home button set to bring up your phone favorites). Other times this may prove useful is if you wish to restrict app store access or hide your e-mail or Phone access while lending an iPhone to a child or other untrustworthy individual.
Sadly, this hiding of apps is not permanent, as the odds are you will sync your iPhone or turn it off at some point, causing the Apple apps will reappear, but if you go long periods without doing so and you for some reason hate seeing the Calculator or any other Apple app on any of your screens (and are scared of Jailbreaking your iPhone to achieve similar results), this work around should do the trick.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
almost cool i guess. sounds like a lot of work for something that is really impossible to keep more than a day a two though.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
yeah but 148 apps? … really? thats about 120 more apps that i would have on my telephone. ya know?
September 16th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I thought you just held the systems icon till they were movable, then hit the X on the corner of the app icon. Or does that just remove the shortcut?
September 16th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I wish the iTunes Apps section would have a page editor that would allow you to arrange your apps easily, rather than sliding them through page after page on the iPhone.
September 17th, 2008 at 5:39 am
OR you can jailbreak and install POOF a lot easier and less time consuming
September 17th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Am I the only one with a jailbroken iPhone???
With my jailbroken phone it’s so much easier! You just need to install bosspref from cydia or the installer, and boom… you have the ability to hide any icon you please. even if you only have 1 page.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:18 am
@zmttoxics, did you even read the article before posting. It is about the Apple Apps that cannot be deleted (they don’t have the X).
September 17th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
holy crap…… or…. you could jailbreak. takes 10 minutes…tops. that is ugly
September 17th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Or, you could jailbreak it and install Poof.app which allows you to hide any app without filling your phone with junk.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
or you could jailbreak it and do whatever you want with the phone you paid $600 for…
September 17th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Gotta be the single ugliest hack I’ve seen for the iPhone. Some points for ingenuity, but the ease of execution on this one is a joke. As the prior commenters mentioned, a jailbroken iPhone and Poof! from the Cydia installer works the treat.
The author simply has too much time on his hands…
September 17th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I agree with all the comments here, although I think all the jailbreakers are taking for granted that all people are comfortable jailbreaking their iPhones.
I stumbled across this by accident while trying to find out how many Apps the iPhone could hold. Once I filled all 9 pages and kept downloading apps, I wondered where they were going, as I could not see them. I dragged an app out of the Dock on to the 9th page, and noticed it pushed the bottom most app off the screen to points unknown, thus leading to my theory of a mysterious 10th page.
I doubt many will use this tip, but I just thought the hidden 10th page was a cool trick, and wanted to get it out there. And honestly, it isn’t that hard to invoke. I can hide in an app temporarily using this tip in less than 2 minutes. But yes, Apple should make it easier to remove their apps from the screen. It doesn’t force us to keep Safari in OS X’s Dock, and the same should hold true on the iPhone.
-The Doc
September 17th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
You don’t need to max out the apps on the first 8 screens, just have one app per screen and then max out the 9th screen. So you could theoretically do this with as little as 24 apps plus the ones you want to get rid of.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Will,
Well, I think the bare minimum is 25, as you need to leave 1 app on the 8th screen after you’ve moved one to the 9th, so you need 2 apps on page 8 (or 1 on page 8 and 1 in the dock).
-The Doc
September 17th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
This has got to be one of the stupidest articles I’ve ever read, by far.
I’m sitting here knee deep with Terminal messing with iPhone’s core & some ‘hacker’ figures out that you can ‘hide’ an app by exploiting a bug which will be fixed faster than you can fill up 9 pages of apps??
September 17th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
If you use QuickPwn, you can jailbreak, use bossprefs to hide the apps you don’t want, then restore your phone. They’ll stay hidden and you will no longer have a jailbroken phone.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:52 am
Works great! Just hope that it will stay this way.. we’ll see.. Thanks!!
September 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am
“I doubt many will use this tip, but I just thought the hidden 10th page was a cool trick, and wanted to get it out there.”
Boggles my mind that so many people who read Macenstein didn’t understand that without you explaining it.
September 18th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
This is retarded.
You know what’s much easier?
POOF. Morons.
http://thebigboss.org/moreinfo/poof.php
September 19th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Maybe its new math - 16×9 = 148? Unless the rules have changed, the limit is 144 icons displayed.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Rob,
It’s old math, actually.
There is a spot for 4 apps at the bottom of the iPhone in the Dock.
144 + 4 = 148
-The Doc
September 19th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Hello!
Thanks very well for this tuto, good things!!!
I want to run sdptool and Bluetool from my Iphone using a Terminal emulator dowload from Cydia. Is someon know how to run them? What commands I have to used?
Thanks a lot!
September 19th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Wut a fukin moron? wut r u 10 yrs old? how the fuk u gonna get rid of the appstore u ass haha!
U can hide most of those apps usin the built in ‘parental control’ stupid new fuker!!
great discovery u made asshole.
September 20th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Will try it. thanks
September 20th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
People can be so judgemental: “The author simply has too much time on his hands…” The author is simply sharing info he discovered from his tedious work with the world. More info is usually a good thing. You use it as you see fit. For me it raises all kinds of questions like is there an 11th page? What is the limit? I currently have 5 pages (not all full) to logically organize my apps and I’m thinking I could use 2 new features to the home pages: Ability to name (label) each page, and a way to go to a particular page directly without scrolling through all the pages.
September 24th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I just jailbroke my 2.1 and found a program on Cydia by bigboss that will allow you to add folders to your ipod, I have cleaned up all my 40 apps less then 1 page.
September 24th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Sorry for the double post, but linkz
http://thebigboss.org/apps/CategoriesHelp.php
September 26th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I guess alot of folks missed the point here.
This is an option for ” Non jail breakers”
Cool tip
October 1st, 2008 at 4:20 am
you could also remove ‘em with poof/bossprefs
October 4th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
that’s not new i have figured it out since 2.0 was released, though you can just delete them using winscp or cyberduck, or if you want, you can make a copy of them so you can put them back if you want it is much easier i think.. peace XD..
rexy_doodle18@yahoo.com.ph
October 7th, 2008 at 3:27 am
Stupid idea
This is not a way to hide the Apps….
Once you restart / spring ….everything will back again.
Use hide icon / poof to do it.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:42 am
This may not be a useful trick (as it is only temporary), but appears to be the only article on the entire WWW documenting this feature of the hidden 10th page. I accidentially hid some apps this way and now know how to restore them. I say to the author, “Thanks for your help!!!!!”
Best wishes to all,
Okmft