There are plenty of reasons you might want to hide an app on your iPhone, whether it’s to keep your Home Screen tidy, stop a curious family member from opening something, or simply add a bit of privacy to apps you’d rather not have visible at a glance. iOS doesn’t have a single dedicated ‘hide app’ button, but there are several genuinely effective methods that achieve the same result, and this guide covers all of them.
The simplest option is removing an app from your Home Screen while keeping it installed in your App Library. Press and hold the app icon, tap Remove App, then choose Remove from Home Screen rather than Delete App. This tucks the app away so it no longer appears among your other icons, but it still exists in your App Library, which you reach by swiping left past your final Home Screen page, and it can still be searched for using Spotlight.
If you want an app hidden more thoroughly, including from search results, Screen Time restrictions can help. Go to Settings, then Screen Time, then Content & Privacy Restrictions, and make sure this is turned on. Under Allowed Apps, you can toggle off specific built-in apps entirely, which removes them from view completely until you switch them back on. This works well for apps like Safari, Camera, or Mail, though it’s more limited for third-party downloaded apps.
For hiding sensitive content within an app rather than the app itself, many built-in apps offer their own privacy features. The Photos app, for example, lets you hide individual photos and albums by tapping Select, choosing the images, then tapping the Share icon and selecting Hide. Hidden photos move to a Hidden album that itself can be hidden from the Albums tab entirely via Settings, Photos, and turning off Show Hidden Album.
Newer versions of iOS also allow you to lock and hide specific apps directly. Press and hold an app icon on the Home Screen, tap Require Face ID (or Touch ID, depending on your device), and choose either Lock, which requires authentication to open the app, or Hide and Require Face ID, which removes it from the Home Screen, App Library, notifications, and search entirely until you unlock it through a dedicated Hidden folder.
It’s worth remembering that none of these methods encrypt or fully conceal an app from someone with deep technical access to your phone or your Apple ID; they’re designed for everyday privacy from people casually picking up your device, not as a substitute for a full device passcode and strong Apple ID security. Make sure your iPhone has a passcode and Face ID or Touch ID enabled as your first line of defence.
Combining these approaches, removing an app from your Home Screen, restricting visibility through Screen Time, and using the newer Face ID lock and hide feature, gives you a genuinely private setup for the apps you’d rather keep to yourself, without needing any third-party software or complicated workarounds.
It’s worth being upfront with anyone sharing your device about why certain apps are hidden, particularly on a shared family iPhone, since discovering hidden apps unexpectedly can understandably feel like a trust issue. Using these features for genuine privacy, such as hiding a banking app from casual view, is very different from using them to conceal something from a partner or family member, and it’s worth being thoughtful about which category your situation falls into.
Third-party apps advertising themselves as ‘app hider’ or ‘vault’ apps do exist on both the App Store and through sideloading, but Apple’s tightly controlled ecosystem means most of these work by duplicating and disguising icons rather than genuinely hiding anything at a system level, so they’re generally less reliable and less secure than Apple’s own built-in Face ID lock and hide feature covered above.