How to: Delete Apple’s Apps from your iPhone - aka “the Hidden 10th iPhone app screen”

September 16, 2008 by Dr. Macenstein
Filed under: Tips/How To, iPhone 

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.

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Comments

39 Comments on How to: Delete Apple’s Apps from your iPhone - aka “the Hidden 10th iPhone app screen”

  1. hellaBAY on Tue, 16th Sep 2008 9:15 pm

    2. 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.

  2. dropd on Tue, 16th Sep 2008 10:31 pm

    3. yeah but 148 apps? … really? thats about 120 more apps that i would have on my telephone. ya know?

  3. zmttoxics on Tue, 16th Sep 2008 11:44 pm

    4. 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?

  4. Jonro on Tue, 16th Sep 2008 11:54 pm

    5. 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.

  5. Corey on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 5:39 am

    6. OR you can jailbreak and install POOF a lot easier and less time consuming :)

  6. Hanaf on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 6:51 am

    7. 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.

  7. cs on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 10:18 am

    8. @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).

  8. Jeremy on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 12:56 pm

    9. holy crap…… or…. you could jailbreak. takes 10 minutes…tops. that is ugly

  9. Ryan Neufeld on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 1:02 pm

    10. Or, you could jailbreak it and install Poof.app which allows you to hide any app without filling your phone with junk.

  10. zach on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 1:08 pm

    11. or you could jailbreak it and do whatever you want with the phone you paid $600 for…

  11. S†åç™ on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 1:09 pm

    12. 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…

  12. Dr. Macenstein on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 1:18 pm

    13. 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

  13. Will Clarke on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 1:20 pm

    14. 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.

  14. Dr. Macenstein on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 1:25 pm

    15. 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

  15. Mike Fish on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 4:00 pm

    16. 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??

  16. Danny on Wed, 17th Sep 2008 11:07 pm

    17. 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.

  17. Joe on Thu, 18th Sep 2008 12:52 am

    18. Works great! Just hope that it will stay this way.. we’ll see.. Thanks!!

  18. Robert Fisher on Thu, 18th Sep 2008 10:59 am

    19. “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.

  19. iamse7en on Thu, 18th Sep 2008 2:10 pm

    20. This is retarded.

    You know what’s much easier?

    POOF. Morons.

    http://thebigboss.org/moreinfo/poof.php

  20. Rob on Fri, 19th Sep 2008 9:44 am

    21. Maybe its new math - 16×9 = 148? Unless the rules have changed, the limit is 144 icons displayed.

  21. Dr. Macenstein on Fri, 19th Sep 2008 9:51 am

    22. 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

  22. Namer on Fri, 19th Sep 2008 10:35 am

    23. 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!

  23. spyboy on Fri, 19th Sep 2008 7:51 pm

    24. 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.

  24. Deeda on Sat, 20th Sep 2008 9:29 am

    25. Will try it. thanks

  25. Kmok7 on Sat, 20th Sep 2008 1:34 pm

    26. 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.

  26. Adam¹ on Wed, 24th Sep 2008 2:38 pm

    27. 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.

  27. Adam¹ on Wed, 24th Sep 2008 2:43 pm

    28. Sorry for the double post, but linkz

    http://thebigboss.org/apps/CategoriesHelp.php

  28. larry on Fri, 26th Sep 2008 10:57 pm

    29. I guess alot of folks missed the point here.
    This is an option for ” Non jail breakers”
    Cool tip

  29. BigHoss on Wed, 1st Oct 2008 4:20 am

    30. you could also remove ‘em with poof/bossprefs

  30. doodle phillipines on Sat, 4th Oct 2008 6:28 pm

    31. 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

  31. Andrew Tan on Tue, 7th Oct 2008 3:27 am

    32. 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.

  32. Okmft on Tue, 25th Nov 2008 1:42 am

    33. 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

  33. dovi on Thu, 29th Jan 2009 9:22 am

    34. Hey there

    Everyone is just ripping the author to shreds, but it’s a very useful hack, thanks! Especially if you don’t want to jail break your phone… yes there are us crazies out there!

    Just thought I’d let you feel a bit better about sharing your thoughts, thanks Doc :)

    Dovi

  34. Mike on Sun, 22nd Feb 2009 4:54 pm

    35. Well, I do not want to jailbreak my iPhone (I actually did once, and everything seemed sluggish and slow and it didn’t really give me anything extra that I care about except for the ability to hide apps), so I found this helpful. It does seem like a lot of work for something that will be undone as soon as I sync my phone again, but I appreciate you posting this tutorial. Thanks

  35. Cappy on Thu, 26th Feb 2009 5:01 pm

    36. OK, I really do have nine pages filled with apps. This little workaround worked fine, but when I did a sync just now, a few of my non-Apple apps got shuttled to the 10th page. How do I get them visible again? Thanks.

    [I'm not jailbroken, and let's not waste time groaning over that fact. I wouldn't have taken a jailbroken iPhone to my local Genius Bar, where they just gave me a brand new iPhone as part of a solution to a problem.]

  36. MizzKay on Sat, 2nd May 2009 3:10 pm

    37. Tried it and after lots of fiddling got it to work, them bloody useless icons were getting on my last nerve!! How do you now get the apps that you want to show on one of the pages?

  37. jtart on Tue, 5th May 2009 7:15 am

    38. Holy funny! Good work and even better writing! That was just fun reading to learn how to go to the 10th ZONE….

  38. safari on Wed, 20th May 2009 12:39 pm

    39. “OK, I really do have nine pages filled with apps. This little workaround worked fine, but when I did a sync just now, a few of my non-Apple apps got shuttled to the 10th page. How do I get them visible again? ”

    Free up some space on your 2nd page. Then turn off the phone…. then on again, they will show up on that 2nd page.

  39. catsfordogs797 on Fri, 29th May 2009 10:28 pm

    40. Umm… All it takes for me is to press and hold an app, then they all start wiggling and have Xs in the corner. You press the X and it is deleted. Takes all but 5 seconds.

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