How to hide an app on your smartphone

Both Android and iOS allow you to hide an app from your smartphone without having to uninstall it: here's how to do it

Until a couple of years ago to hide an app from your smartphone you needed to jailbreak the device, both in Android and iOS devices. Now it's different. The restrictions are much less and users can make an app disappear from the drawer without having to resort to extreme solutions. But by simply using tools that are already present on the device.

In Android smartphones, in some cases it is necessary to hide apps. Especially if you buy a branded device, i.e. sold by a carrier. In such cases, unnecessary applications are installed on the smartphone, but they cannot be deleted. They are in addition to the apps made directly by the manufacturers. They are also quite useless (with rare exceptions) and cannot be deleted. The only possible solution is to hide these apps. It only takes a few minutes to do so and there are many solutions available. Here's how to hide an app on Android and iOS smartphones.

Hiding an app on Android

There are two solutions to make an app icon disappear from your drawer. The first one is simpler, but it only works with bloatware, i.e. apps that are pre-installed on your smartphone. The second one, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated but allows you to hide any unwanted app. Let's go in order and start with the first method.

To make a bloatware disappear from your smartphone, simply go into the Settings of your Android smartphone. Then you have to press on Apps and you will access the list with all the apps installed on your smartphone. At this point you have to scroll down until you find the offending app, press on its name and tap on Disable. A couple of pop-ups will pop up asking you if you're sure about what you're doing and eventually the app will be hidden and can't even be activated in the background.

The process you just saw is very simple, but it can't be used with most apps. For example, if we want to hide a video game, we won't be able to do it. In these cases, another app from the Google Play Store comes to our rescue. Let's talk about Apex Launcher. Apex Launcher is a launcher for Android that, in addition to changing the graphical interface of the smartphone, adds some features. Among them is the ability to hide an application. After installing the launcher, you will have to enter Apex Settings and go to the Drawer Settings section. From the various options you'll have to choose Hide App. At this point you'll see a list of all the applications you have installed and you can choose which one you want to disappear from the drawer of your smartphone.

How to hide an application from iOS

On the iPhone there is no real function that allows you to hide an application from the home screen. But thanks to a simple trick you can make some unwanted apps disappear. The first step to do is to create a folder on the home. At this point we need to move all the useless apps we want to remove from the app drawer into this new folder. This way, the apps will be hidden from the iPhone's home screen and won't be in our way while using the smartphone.