How to send new apps directly to the app library on iphone
Khamosh Pathak is a freelance technology writer who specializes in tutorials. His work has also been published on Lifehacker, iPhoneHacks, Zapier’s blog, MakeUseOf, and Guiding Tech. Khamosh has nearly a decade of experience writing how-tos, features and technology guides on the internet. Read more.
When you hide a page from your iPhone’s home screen, your handset automatically starts sending all new app downloads to the App Library. But what if you want to do this without editing the home screen layout?
App Library is Apple’s own take on Android’s app drawer. It’s a single screen that lists all of the apps installed on your iPhone. The apps are intelligently organized in different folders, and it’s easy to search through them as well. You’ll find App Library on the right-most page of the iPhone home screen.
By default, a newly downloaded app shows up on the last page on your home screen. If you’re fond of the App Library, you might want to send newly installed apps directly to the App Library (helping you reduce the home screen clutter).
Open the “Settings” app, and go to the “Home Screen” section.
Here, under the “New App Downloads” heading, select the “App Library Only” option.
If you want to see notification badges for apps in the App Library, tap the toggle next to the “Show In App Library” option.
And that’s it. When you download new apps, they will show up in the “Recently Added” folder in the App Library instead of on your home screen.
As we mentioned above, you can also enable this feature by hiding one of your iPhone’s home screens. To do this, tap the pages buttons when in jiggle mode and then select a checkmark to hide the corresponding page. Here’s our detailed guide on hiding iPhone home screen pages.
With iOS 14 and later, there are new ways to find and organize the apps on your iPhone — so you see what you want, where you want. Learn how to use the App Library and organize your Home Screen.
Use the App Library to find your apps
From your Home Screen, swipe left until you see the App Library. Your apps are automatically sorted into categories. For example, you might see your social media apps under a Social category. The apps that you use most frequently will automatically reorder based on your usage. When you install new apps, they’ll be added to your App Library, but you can change where new apps get downloaded.
Search for an app in the App Library
- Go to the App Library.
- Tap the search field, then enter the app that you’re looking for.
- Tap the app to open it.
Delete an app from the App Library
- Go to the App Library and tap the search field to open the list.
- Touch and hold the app icon, then tap Delete App .
- Tap Delete again to confirm.
If you can’t delete an app that’s not made by Apple, disable parental controls, then try deleting the app again.
Move apps to the App Library
- Touch and hold the app.
- Tap Remove App.
- Tap Remove from Home Screen.
Find, hide, and remove pages on your Home Screen
With iOS 14 and later, you can easily hide pages to streamline how your Home Screen looks and add them back whenever you want. Here’s how:
- Touch and hold an empty area on your Home Screen.
- Tap the dots near the bottom of your screen.
- Tap the circle under the page that you want to hide.
- Tap Done.
To unhide a page, repeat the steps above. Then use the App Library to quickly find apps hidden on different pages.
To remove pages from your Home Screen:
- Touch and hold an empty area on your Home Screen.
- Tap the dots near the bottom of your screen.
- Tap the circle under the page that you want to hide.
- Tap the Remove button , then tap Remove.
When you remove a page from your Home Screen, the apps will still appear in the App Library.
Reorder pages on your Home Screen
With iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, you can move pages on your Home Screen. Here’s how:
- Touch and hold an empty area on your Home Screen.
- Tap the dots near the bottom of your screen.
- Drag a page to reorder it.
- Tap Done.
Change where new apps get downloaded
To change where new apps get downloaded on your iPhone, or to show or hide the notifications that you see in the App Library:
- Go to Settings > Home Screen.
- Select an option such as Add to Home Screen or App Library Only.
Learn more
Learn how to customize the widgets on your Home Screen to keep information at your fingertips.
Apple has released the beta version of the iOS 14 operating system for the iPhone, which brings several new features. One of them is App Library which automatically organizes apps into categories and can be easily accessed.
Usually, when you install a new application on your iPhone, it appears on the home screen automatically. But with the new App Library already present, you can access the app from there, making the app’s presence on the home screen a bit chaotic.
In this guide, we will show you a step-by-step process on how you can stop newly-installed apps from appearing on the home screen and directly send them to the App Library, from where you can access them.
Add apps directly in App Library on iPhone
Before processing further, make sure that you have already installed the iOS 14 Public Beta on your iPhone. If you haven’t already, we have published a step-by-step guide for it as well, do check that out.
Step 1: Open the “Settings” app on your iPhone and then tap on the “Home Screen” option from the list.
Step 2: Now, under the “New App Downloads” section, tap on the option that reads “App Library Only.”
Step 3: As for the notification badges, if you want it to appear for apps in the App Library, toggle that option on.
So, from now onwards, when you install the new apps, they will show up in the “Recently Added” folder in the App Library and not on your phone’s home screen.
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Something New
A few changes to Apple’s App Library can restore the original setup for long-time iPhone and iPad users or make the new system faster and easier.
The iPhone and iPad both have an App Library, which Apple added to make it easy to find apps that might not be used frequently and reduce clutter on the Home Screen. While it’s a great addition to iOS and iPadOS, how it works might confuse those accustomed to the older system. However, with a few helpful tips, Apple’s App Library should become a valuable tool to launch any app quickly.
Apple has sped up the pace of iPhone and iPad innovations, both in hardware upgrades and operating system updates. By rethinking some of the old designs and embracing new technologies and ideas, the iPhone and iPad have become more powerful and valuable than ever before. Hardware improvements are evident at every new Apple event, but changes to the operating system, such as the App Library, sometimes fly under the radar.
Apple’s App Library automatically stores every app that’s installed on an iPhone or iPad. Users can find it by swiping to the screen furthest to the right. By default, that’s the only place new apps will appear. For new users, there might only be a couple of Home Screen pages, so this placement makes perfect sense. Users can place a favorite app on the first few pages by holding until the icon shakes, then dragging it to the Home Screen. The App Library isn’t quite as convenient for those with several pages of apps since it might take several swipes to get there. Once in the App Library, apps are automatically grouped, and Apple usually gets the placement correct. When it doesn’t, an app can be found by typing its name in the search box. A letter or two into typing, the app will appear in a list below.
iPhone & iPad App Library Options
A few adjustments to the App Library and Home Screen can make this feature much more helpful for every iPhone and iPad user. The App Library is shown in the dock on the iPad, making access super quick. Users can switch off the Settings app’s Home Screen & Dock tab with the toggle to Show App Library in Dock. There’s also an option to show newly downloaded apps on the Home Screen as well as in the App Library. This method will be more familiar to long-time Apple users and works for both iPhone and iPad.
However, there is value in trying the new system since it dramatically reduces clutter. For quicker access to the App Library, it’s best to hide the last few Home Screen pages, which likely have rarely used apps. This is done by pressing and holding the area just above the dock, where horizontal dots appear until the Home Screen pages are shown as icons. Tapping a checkbox hides that page, but the apps are still available in the App Library. Testing this method out for a few days might reveal that Apple’s new App Library for the iPad and iPhone is better despite the unfamiliar feel.
The App Library organizes the apps on your Apple device so you know where and how to find them.
Keeping track of all the apps on your iPhone or iPad can be a challenge, but the App Library has made it easier. This feature allows your device to intelligently organizes apps into folders based on categories such as suggested apps, recently added apps, social, entertainment, shopping, music, games, and more.
You can open the App Library with a simple swipe, then open a specific app from its folder, perform a search for the right app, or browse all your apps in alphabetical order. Apps can be moved from the App Library to the home screen, or deleted entirely, but apps in the library cannot be moved from one folder to another. If you feel an app has been categorized in the wrong folder, there’s nothing you can do.
Overall, the App Library is a helpful tool for managing your apps and finding the ones you need. It’s especially useful if you haven’t already manually organized your apps into different folders. Here’s how the feature works.
Update Your iPhone or iPad
To use the App Library, you will need to update your iPhone to iOS 14 or higher and iPad to iPadOS 15 or higher, if you haven’t already done so. On either device, go to Settings > General > Software Update. Your device will indicate that your software is up to date or it will prompt you to download and install the latest update.
Open the App Library
After you’ve updated your device, open to the home screen and swipe to the left until you bump into the App Library screen. Here, you’ll see various folders with your apps neatly organized and tucked into each one based on the most fitting category.
Some of the apps have large icons, while others sport smaller icons in groups of four. You can open an app that has a large icon by just tapping it. For apps with small icons, tap anywhere in the quadrant of four small icons to bring up a screen displaying all of the apps in that category. From there, just tap the app icon.
Search for Apps
If you’re having trouble finding a specific app, you can browse or search for it. Swipe down on the App Library screen to view an alphabetical list of all the apps installed on the device. To find a specific app faster, tap a letter on the right-hand side to see all apps starting with that letter.
Alternatively, start typing the name of the app you want in the App Library search field at the top to see the corresponding apps. Tap the app icon to launch the app.
Add Apps to Home Screen
You can add an app from the App Library to your home screen if it’s not already there. Long-press on the icon to open the command menu, then tap Add to Home Screen. The app’s icon appears on the next free spot on your home screen but also remains in the App Library.
Another method of moving apps is to hold down on an app until all the icons start jiggling. The home screen will then appear, allowing you to place the icon into the correct position. You can also hold down on an icon from the home screen and select the Edit Home Screen command from the menu to make all the apps jiggle.
When you hide a page from your iPhone’s home screen, your handset automatically starts sending all new app downloads to the App Library. But what if you want to do this without editing the home screen layout?
App Library is Apple’s own take on Android’s app drawer. It’s a single screen that lists all of the apps installed on your iPhone. The apps are intelligently organized in different folders, and it’s easy to search through them as well. You’ll find App Library on the right-most page of the iPhone home screen.
By default, a newly downloaded app shows up on the last page on your home screen. If you’re fond of the App Library, you might want to send newly installed apps directly to the App Library (helping you reduce the home screen clutter).
Open the “Settings” app, and go to the “Home Screen” section.
Here, under the “New App Downloads” heading, select the “App Library Only” option.
If you want to see notification badges for apps in the App Library, tap the toggle next to the “Show In App Library” option.
And that’s it. When you download new apps, they will show up in the “Recently Added” folder in the App Library instead of on your home screen.
As we mentioned above, you can also enable this feature by hiding one of your iPhone’s home screens. To do this, tap the pages buttons when in jiggle mode and then select a checkmark to hide the corresponding page. Here’s our detailed guide on hiding iPhone home screen pages.
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Want to move an app from the App Library back to the Home Screen on your iPhone? Here are two ways to do it.
In previous versions of iOS, every app on your iPhone would appear on the Home Screen. But with the introduction of the App Library in iOS 14, that is no longer the case. These days, you can remove apps from the Home Screen, filing them out of sight in the App Library.
That’s all well and good if you’re aiming for an uncluttered Home Screen, but it can take longer to find the apps you use every day. So that why we’ll show you how to add apps back to the Home Screen in the guide below.
Option 1. Drag Apps From the App Library to the Home Screen
Image Gallery (2 Images)
The quickest way to move apps from the App Library back to your iPhone Home Screen is to drag them.
First, swipe from right to left on your Home Screen to find the App Library. Then, find the app you want to move by searching through the various categories or tapping the search bar at the top of the page.
When you’ve found the app you’re looking for, tap and hold on it for just a second, until you feel a tap or hear a click, then slide your finger to the left of the screen to drag it onto the Home Screen.
You can now drop the app exactly where you want it, or slide back to the right edge of the screen to add it onto a new Home Screen.
Option 2. Tap and Hold to Add Apps to the Home Screen
Dragging an app to the Home Screen requires precise tap-and-hold timing; an easier option is to open the action menu for an app and tap Add to Home Screen.
To start, go to the App Library and find the app you want to move, just as we explained how to do in the above instructions.
When you’ve found the app you want to move, tap and hold on it until a menu appears, then tap Add to Home Screen.
The app will appear in the next free space on your Home Screen, creating a new Home Screen if needed.
Make Sure All New Apps Save to Your Home Screen
If you want to make sure new iPhone apps always appear on your Home Screen, rather than saving straight to the App Library, you need to change an option in the Settings.
Just go to Settings > Home Screen and enable the option to Add to Home Screen.
– Oct. 22nd 2020 12:00 am PT
A major new change that comes with iOS 14 alongside home screen widgets is the iPhone App Library. The feature offers a new way to manage the many apps you’ve got with auto-generated categories, a new alphabetical view, the ability to hide app pages, and more. Read on for a hands-on look at how to use the new iPhone App Library in iOS 14.
The new iOS 14 home screen widgets and App Library combine to bring the biggest-ever overhaul of the iOS user interface since it first launched.
What is the App Library?
While home screen widgets offer a refreshed UI with different sized, customizable widgets, the App Library brings some nice options to organize and simplify how you access apps with auto-generated categories/folders, the option to hide app pages, a new way to manage downloads, an alphabetical app list, and more. The App Library lives at the end of your last iPhone app page.
How to use the iPhone App Library in iOS 14
Accessing the App Library
- Head to your last page of apps
- Swipe one more time from right to left
- Now you’ll see the App Library with automatically generated app categories
Using the App Library
- You can tap an individual app to open it
- Use the search bar at the top to find apps
- Tap the small four app bundles in the bottom right corner of a category to see all the apps in that App Library folder
- Pull down from the top of the App Library to see an alphabetical list of all apps
- Interesting enough, I haven’t had success launching the App Library with Siri
Hiding iPhone app pages
If you like the idea of leaning more on the iPhone App Library, you can hide your app pages. That makes it quicker to get to the App Library.
- Long press on a blank area of your home screen or any app page
- Once in edit mode, tap the app page dot icons in the bottom-middle of your screen
- Uncheck the app pages that you want to hide
- Tap Done in the top right corner
You can unhide your app pages at any time by reversing the steps above.
Managing the App Library
After you’ve edited app pages, you’ll see an alert that new downloads will show up in the Recently Added section of the App Library. For now, the default is for new app downloads to also show up on your home screen/app page but you can change that in the Settings app.
If you’d like to have new downloads only show up in the iPhone App Library and not appear on the home screen or an app page, head to Settings > Home Screen and tap “App Library only.”
There’s also an option to get a notification badge to “Show in App Library” if you’d like reminders and a shortcut.
Going further
- Long press on a category name or a black space in the App Library to delete apps
- Long press on an individual app in the App Library to add it to back to your home screen
- For now, there’s no way to rename the auto-created App Library categories or rearrange them (hopefully that could arrive in an update)
- You can still use folders on your home screen or on app pages as well as the App Library categories/folders, they’re separate
What do you think of the iPhone App Library? Useful and valuable or do you think you won’t end up using it? Any changes you’d like to see before the public release? Share your ideas in the comments below!
Read more 9to5Mac tutorials:
- Hands-on with the top 10 iOS 14 features for iPhone [Video]
- iPadOS 14 – 50+ Top Features and Changes! [Video]
- iOS 14: Here’s how to use the new iPhone home screen widgets
- Hands-on: Widgetsmith brings ultra-customizable widgets to your iOS 14 home screen
- iOS 14: How to do Picture in Picture video multitasking on iPhone
- iOS 14: How to watch 4K YouTube videos on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV
- iOS 14: How the compact call interface works on iPhone
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Prior to iOS 14, one of the central problems with iOS (compared to Android) was that every single app you’ve ever downloaded has to exist somewhere on your home screen. You can have folders, you can have multiple home screens, but you can’t simply hide an app you don’t use very often.
The iOS 14 release changes all that. In addition to being able to put Widgets on your home screen, you can now remove apps without uninstalling them! A new top-level screen called the App Library contains all the apps installed on your iPhone. It’s a bit like the app drawer on most Android phones, but it looks and behaves differently.
Mastering the App Library is key to keeping a more tidy and organized iPhone and quickly being able to find the app you want. Here’s how the App Library works.
App Library organization
Once you install iOS 14, you’ll find the App Library to the right of your last home screen. Just keep swiping and you’ll soon be there.
You don’t have to organize this screen. In fact, you can’t organize it. All your apps will appear in little four-square boxes.
The upper left box is always Suggestions. This will show four apps that Siri has determined you are likely to use based on the time of day, your location, etc. It gets smarter the more you use your iPhone, and the suggestions are calculated entirely on-device No data about your app use habits or location or anything else are ever being sent anywhere.
In the upper right you’ll find Recently Added, which is self-explanatory. It shows apps you’ve most recently installed.
Tap the big app icons to launch the app. Tap the small four-square group to open the category folder.
Beneath that are four-square “folders” that are auto-arranged by app category. Apple automatically determines to which category an app belongs, and it can be a little unintuitive. For example, both Twitter and Reddit are in the “News” category of the App Store (currently #1 and #2 respectively). But Twitter is in the Social box of the App Library and Reddit is in the Reference & Reading section. Ring is in Utilities but Nest is in Lifestyle.
Each of these boxes will show three full-size app icon together with a little four-icon grouping in the lower right. Apple doesn’t make it clear, but if you tap a full-size app icon the app will launch. If you tap the little four-icon grouping you’ll open up a view of all the apps in that category.
The category boxes themselves aren’t always in the same place. They will reorder themselves based on which apps you use most often.
Searching the App Library
If you don’t want to open and close the app category boxes looking for the app you need, search is the way to go.
Just drag down on the App Library, or tap the search box, to get an alphabetical index of all your apps.
Tap the search box at the top of the screen, or swipe down anywhere on the screen, and you can search by name or scroll through an alphabetical list of all the apps on your iPhone.
Adding apps to the home screen
If there’s an app in the App Library that isn’t on your home screen, it’s easy to add. Just tap and hold on an app icon until you see the context menu, and choose “Add to Home Screen.”
If an app already exists on your home screen, you won’t see that option.
Long-press an icon in the App Library to add it to your home screen.
Adding an app to your home screen does not remove it from the App Library—it will always contain all the apps on your iPhone.
You can also enter “jiggle mode” and drag apps off the left edge of the App Library to place them on your home screen.
Removing individual apps from the home screen
If you want an app to exist in the App Library but do not want an icon on your home screen, that’s easy to do.
Tap and hold on the app until the context menu pops up. Choose Remove App and you’ll be presented with a popup with three options: Cancel, Remove from Home Screen, or Delete.
Just long-press an app icon to remove it from your home screen. It will stay in your App Library, if you choose.
Delete will remove the app entirely, but Remove from Home Screen will simply take the icon away—it will still exist in the App Library where it always has always been.
Removing pages of apps from the home screen
You can remove entire pages of apps (and widgets) from the home screen, too.
Tap and hold on an empty space of your home screen to enter “jiggle mode” and then tap on the little page indicator near the bottom of the screen.
Enter “jiggle mode” and tap the page indicators to disable or enable entire home screen pages.
This will bring up an Edit Pages screen where you can select or de-select entire home screen pages. If you de-select one, it will no longer appear on your home screen, but all those apps will always be in your App Library.
What’s more, your iPhone saves those layouts, so you can simply re-enable them later.
Downloading apps to the App Library
Once you get used to a minimalist home screen with just a few widgets and app icons, it’s hard to go back to all that clutter. When you download a new app from the App Store, it’ll still appear on your home screen, but you can change that behavior.
You can download apps without cluttering up your home screen.
If you want new app downloads to skip the home screen and only appear in your App Library, open Settings, tap on Home Screen, then select whether you want new app download to appear in both the App Library and the home screen, or just the App Library. You can also choose to show notification badges (the red dots in the corner with numbers) on App Library icons.
Remember, all your apps are always in the App Library. There is no way to make an app appear on the home screen but not the App Library.
Did all the apps disappear from your iPhone or iPad Home Screen?
iOS 14 or later features an all-new App Library so that people can well organize the apps on their iPhones. The App Library contains all the apps and automatically sorts them into categories such as Social and Productivity. Users can further hide app pages from iPhone’s home screen for a clutter-free look.
That said, even though all apps are accessible through the App Library, the various app icons on home screen pages aren’t hidden by default. Perhaps, if you have removed all the apps from your home screen then you can only open them either using the App Library, Spotlight search, or Siri.
Can I move all apps from App Library to Home Screen?
How do I launch apps directly from my home screen instead of searching or finding a particular app in the App Library? Well, you can simply add the desired app back to your home screen. Besides, it is possible to move multiple apps from App Library to Home Screen in one go. However, the procedure to mass add apps to the home screen isn’t convenient.
At the same time, you can get all your apps out of App Library at once. Thankfully, there is an easy workaround to move all apps from App Library to Home Screen at once on iPhone. This saves the time and hassle of manually adding individual apps one by one to the home screen.
Now let’s see how you can put hidden apps back to your home screen in iOS 14 and iOS 15. Before proceeding, note that this procedure will remove all the home screen widgets added by you.
How to add all apps to Home Screen at once from App Library
Follow the steps below to put all apps icons back on your iPhone home screen after removing them.
- Go to the Settings app and tap “General”.
- Scroll down to the bottom and tap on “Transfer or Reset iPhone”.
- Tap on “Reset” at the bottom of the screen.
- Select the “Reset Home Screen Layout” option from the list.
- Tap on “Reset Home Screen” to confirm your selection.
That’s it. Doing so will restore all the missing apps that might have disappeared from your home screen.
While pre-loaded apps from Apple will appear like when you bought the iPhone. Meanwhile, all the user-installed apps will be arranged in alphabetical order. The restored apps also include bookmarks (custom app icons) and website shortcuts as long as you haven’t removed the app pages containing those bookmarks.
NOTE: To restore the default home screen layout in iOS 14,
Go to Settings > General > Reset. Select the “Reset Home Screen Layout” option and tap “Reset Home Screen” to confirm.
Unhide hidden home screen pages on iPhone
Alternatively, you can unhide app pages that you might have hidden after installing iOS 14 to enjoy the App Library. This should let you get your apps back from App Library without resetting the home screen. This however won’t help if you have manually removed all the apps icons from your home screen pages.
To unhide a page from iPhone Home Screen,
- Long-press an empty area on your Home Screen.
- In Edit mode, tap the page dots in the bottom center of the screen.
- Tick mark the circle under the app pages you want to unhide.
- Tap Done at the upper-right corner.
TIP: Change where newly downloaded apps appear
After updating to iOS 14, any new apps you download still appear on your home screen as they did earlier. Perhaps, if that’s not happening then you might have modified a setting at some point in time.
To always show newly downloads apps on your home screen, go to Settings > Home Screen. Under ‘Newly Downloaded Apps’, select “Add to Home Screen” instead of “App Library Only”.
From now onwards, newly installed apps will appear on Home Screen as well as in the App Library.
Unrestrict apps not appearing anywhere on iPhone
If you have set a restriction for built-in apps then you won’t be able to find the restricted app anywhere on your iPhone. This means the app will be hidden from Home Screen and you cannot find it using Siri, Spotlight search, or in the App Library.
To access the disabled app again,
- Go to Settings > Screen Time.
- Tap “Content & Privacy Restrictions“.
- Enter passcode (if asked) and make sure the toggle next to ‘Content & Privacy Restrictions’ is turned on.
- Tap on “Allowed Apps”.
- Turn on the toggle button next to the disabled app to unhide it.
The app will now reappear on your home screen and you can even search for it.
Deleting apps from your iPhone takes a few extra steps. We’ll explain.
Deleting apps is a necessary task, but it’s also a little more confusing now.
You may find deleting apps from your iPhone a bit trickier than before. AAre they gone for good when you delete them from your Home screen? Ever since app support for the iPhone showed up in 2008, the process to delete an app had been the same. Long-press the app icon until you enable jiggle mode (that’s the official name, per Apple), then tap “X.” Confirm you wanted to remove the app, and it disappears — no additional steps required.
But now, you’ll have to make a few extra taps for them to disappear. With iOS 15, you’ll have to decide if you want to edit your home screen or delete the app for good. You can also remove built-in apps that you rarely use, too. And you can use the App Library to store apps that you don’t want to see on your Home screen, but aren’t ready to delete from your phone.
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I’ll walk you through how to remove apps for good, keep them in your library and make changes to your Home screen. For more Apple news, here’s everything to know about Apple’s October event and the latest on the iPhone 13 models . This story was recently updated.
How to move or delete apps on your iPhone home screen
There are a couple of ways you can delete an app on your iPhone. To start, you can long-press an app icon until you see a pop-up menu. The actions you can then take will depend on the app. In the Mail app, for example, in addition to app-specific actions (like a composing a new email) you’ll see two system options: Remove App and Edit Home Screen. You can share the app, too.
Alternatively, you can keep long-pressing the app icon for a few more seconds until all of the app icons start dancing.
Whether you select Remove App from the pop-up menu, or you tap on the new “-” sign on the app icon while in jiggle mode, you’ll be presented with a brand-new prompt: Asking if you want to delete the app or move it from the Home screen.
Deleting the app will remove the app and all of its data from your phone, freeing up precious storage space. Moving it to your App Library will only remove the app icon from your Home screen. The app will remain installed, and you can access it at any time by swiping from right to left on your home screen until you get to your App Library.
If you’re using jiggle mode to clear out unused apps, keep repeating the same steps until you’re given the option to delete the app from the Apple Store, then tap Delete or tap on a blank area of your screen.
You can delete apps from the App Library, as well.
Delete apps in your App Library
There are multiple ways to do this.
Your first option is to swipe the last page of your Home screen until you see your App Library. Next, use the search bar at the top of your App Library to search for the app by scrolling through the list of icons. Long-press on the app icon until you see a pop-up menu, and then select Delete App. The key to seeing the menu is the long touch. Be careful not to accidentally drag the app to your home screen instead.
The other option is to find the app in its categorical folder, long-press on it, then select Delete App from the popup. You can then continue deleting apps with a tap on the “X” after triggering jiggle mode. Tap Done or leave the folder when you’re finished.
Now that you’ve learned the new method for deleting apps on your iPhone, make sure to check out all of our favorite features in iOS 15 . We’ve also found a handful of hidden features you’re sure to love as much as we do . If you have a new Apple Watch , change these settings right away .
By Killian Bell • 12:00 pm, July 9, 2020
- How-To
- Top stories
Don’t organize all your iPhone apps manually.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
iOS 14 makes it easier than ever to keep a tidy Home screen, thanks to the ability to hide Home screen pages and its brilliant new App Library. Here’s how to send new downloads to the App Library automatically so that you don’t have to worry about cleaning up yourself later on.
iOS 14 brings the biggest changes we’ve ever seen to iPhone’s Home screen. It’s more customizable, with awesome new widgets that make useful information available at a glance, and easier to keep clean.
For a really clean look, you’ll want to take full advantage of the new App Drawer. It organizes all your apps for you so that you don’t have to manually sort them into folders. And with a quick tweak, you can make it so that every new download goes to the App Drawer automatically.
Have App Drawer organize your apps in iOS 14
With this feature enabled, new downloads no longer clutter up your Home screen, forcing you to organize them manually later on. They’ll go right into the App Drawer, into the correct category folder, where they’re out of sight but still easy enough to find.
These are the steps to follow to enable automatic sorting:
- Open the Settings app on iPhone.
- Tap Home Screen.
- Under New App Downloads, select App Library Only.
Your Home screen remains clean, no matter how many apps you install.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
You’re all set. Your Home screen will now remain unchanged, so you won’t have to find homes for new apps after installing them. And if you do decide you want to put a new app on your Home screen later, simply find it in the App Drawer, tap and hold it, then drag it out.
Sadly, the App Drawer isn’t available in iPadOS 14, so you can use the same trick to keep your Home screen clean on iPad.
App Library, along with Home screen widgets and the cool back tap feature, is probably the biggest highlight of iOS 14. The best part about this all-new feature is the ability to automatically organize apps into different categories like social, entertainment, and creativity for quick access. When you download new apps, they not only appear on the home screen but also in the App Library (in the recently added section). However, you can choose to directly download new apps into App Library in iOS 14, if you don’t like to clutter the home screen with a ton of apps.
Download New Apps Directly into App Library on iPhone Running iOS 14
Personally, I prefer to keep the home screen clean by either hiding apps or putting them into different folders. With iOS 14 offering a pretty straightforward way to organize apps, I no longer need to create app folders.
As App Library also offers quick access to apps, there is no point in showing them on the home screen. It’s a quite simple yet effective way to prevent the home screen from being messed up. Let me show you this little nifty feature works!
1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Now, tap on the Home Screen.
3. Under the New App Downloads section, choose App Library Only.
That’s pretty much it! Going forward, new apps will be automatically downloaded to App Library on your iOS 14 device. If you ever want to change this behavior, follow the same steps, and then choose the Add to Home Screen option in the end.
Use App Library to Keep the Home Screen Clean
So, that’s the way you can use Apple Library to keep the home screen of your device uncluttered. While it may seem to be a tiny feature, I find it quite helpful. And if you also prefer to have a clean looking home screen, you may appreciate it as well.
After rigorous beta testing, iOS 14 is set to be officially rolled out next month. Aside from being feature-rich, the latest iteration of iOS has also enhanced privacy by introducing a series of privacy-centric features like the ability to disable tracking, restricting apps’ access to the local networks, and even stopping apps from having access to the precise location.
If you are running iOS 14 beta, let us know how it’s going for you. If not, are you excited? Let us know in the comments below.
by Jonny Evans · January 17, 2022
Introduced in iOS 14, App Library is a useful space to master
Introduced with iOS 14, App Library helps you declutter your ever-expanding collection of Home Page apps by automatically gathering them into specific App categories, such as Utilities or Entertainment. This is how to use App Library on iPad and iPhone.
How to get to App Library on iPad and iPhone
To get to App Library on iPhone just swipe left on your Home Screen until you find it. As you will see, the library combines all your apps within its predefined collections.
You can get to App Library in the same way on your iPad, but you’’’ also find an App Library icon available to the right of your Dock which takes you directly there.
How to use App Library to select apps
While App Library is useful, it can take a few moments to figure out how to use the space. It becomes easier to do so once you understand what it is you are seeing there.
First of all, consider the icons.
Section of a typical App Library page. Note how the lower left collection has seven app icons visible.
Each automatically collected group of apps is shown by an group consisting of four or seven app icons. If you see four (or less) icons in that collection, then you have just four apps in there.
Tap the smaller area containing four mini icons to open the full collection
Each one of those collections holds four icons by default. However, larger collections are shown slightly differently with seven visible icons in App Library view.
You can open all the normal sized apps by tapping the large icon in the collection.
But if you tap the smaller icons, you open a complete list containing all the apps available in that collection category. You can then locate and select the app you need.
You can also search for an app by name in the search bar at the top of your App Library.
How to use App Library search
App Library search lets you find your app by name. Tap in the search bar and a list of your apps will appear with an A-Z index also visible at the right.
- You can scroll through the list on page in the normal way.
- Select a name by the first letter of the name using the index.
- Scroll through the whole collection using the index.
When you scroll through the list by tapping and holding the index scrolling will be significantly faster and you will experience a rapid clicking sound as you do.
How to put an app in App Library
It’s possible to manually place an app in the library: just tap and hold the app, choose Remove App and then select Remove from Home Screen. The app will now only be found in App Library or when you search for that app.
How to add an app from App Library to your Home Screen
If you come across an app you decide you want to make easy to find by placing it on your Home Screen, just long press he app icon and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’.
How to remove an app from App Library
You may not want to keep an app in the App Library. To delete it from there open App Library, tap in the search field and find the app listing. Once you find the app icon in the index page you can delete it by touching and holding the icon, tapping Delete App and then tapping Delete again to confirm. Or tap Remove from Home Screen if you want the app to be made available in your App Library.
How to hide pages
Using a combination of Widgets and a little smart app collection editing, it should be possible to create one or two pages of apps that you use most frequently, leaving all your other apps available only via App Library.
You can remove pages from your Home screen you no longer wish to use as follows:
Touch and hold an empty area on your Home Screen.
Tap the dots at the bottom of the screen and a new page appears depicting all the Home Screen pages on your device.
Tap the circle under the page(s) you wish to hind and tap Done.
The pages haven’t actually gone – to unhide them just tap an empty area of your Home Screen and go through the same process, but unselect the page you now wish to see.
You can also delete a page by selecting it and then tapping Remove. This eliminates the page, but all your apps will still be available in your App Library.
You can also tap and hold to slide pages around in this view.
How to change where new apps go
By default, newly downloaded apps are stored on your collection of Home pages, but you can change this so that new apps are automatically stowed in your App Library. You can then choose to add them to a Home Page later if you find you need to get to them frequently. To store new apps directly into App Library, tap Settings>Home Screen and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’ or ‘App Library Only’.
Siri needs to catch up
You can’t yet ask Siri to open the App Library for you. This makes little sense given that the Apple voice assistant can open specific apps. Surely this would be easy enough for the Siri team to figure out?
Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
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The App Library is one of iOS 14‘s most useful features. It’s basically a drawer for all of your iPhone’s apps, tucked away after the last page of the home screen. This doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary on its own, but what it means is that you can remove apps from your home screen, resting safe in the knowledge that they’ll still be discoverable via the App Library. This is great if there are a bunch of apps you hardly ever use since moving them to the App Library will mean that you can tidy up your home screen and display only the apps you really need.
In celebration of this helpful feature, we explain how to use iOS 14’s App Library. We detail how to remove apps from your home screen and then find them in the App Library. We also explain how to return apps from your App Library to the home screen, how to delete apps permanently from the App Library, and also how to change the default location of downloaded apps.
How to use iOS 14’s App Library
Even before you remove apps from your home screen, you can still use iOS 14’s App Library to find every app on your iPhone. To access the App Library, swipe beyond the very last page of the home screen.
The App Library displays all of your apps, so you can scroll down to find the one you’re looking for. Alternatively, you can simply tap the App Library search bar and then start typing the name of the app. The App Library will present apps before you finish typing an app’s complete name.
How to remove apps from the home screen (and find them in iOS 14’s App Library)
On its own, the App Library doesn’t make a massive difference, since even before iOS 14 you could search for apps by swiping down from the middle of the home screen. However, the App Library lets you remove apps from your home screen, since before iOS 14, you couldn’t do this without deleting apps altogether.
You can remove apps from your home screen by doing the following:
Step 1: Tap and hold on the app you want to remove. Once the Edit sub-menu appears, tap Remove App.
Step 2: Tap Move to App Library.
Repeat this process for any other apps you want to relegate from the home screen to the App Library. Once you’ve finished removing apps in this way, you can still find the moved apps in the App Library.
To do this, simply swipe past the final page of the home screen. As above, either scroll down to find the desired app, or find it via the App Library search bar.
How to move apps from the App Library back to the home screen
Let’s assume you want to move an app from your App Library back to the home screen. Here’s what you do:
Step 1: Swipe to the App Library. Scroll down and find the app you want to return to the home screen (you can also find it via the App Library search bar). Tap and hold it, until the sub-menu appears.
Step 2: Tap Add to home Screen.
It’s as simple as that, and obviously you can repeat this process to add as many apps as you’d like.
You can also delete apps from your iPhone using the App Library. Again, find the desired app in the Library, tap and hold on it, and then tap Delete App.
Changing where newly downloaded apps are located
One last thing: You can also change your iPhone’s settings so that apps you download from the App Store get sent to the App Library, rather than to your home screen. To do this, simply go to Settings > Home Screen. From there, choose either Add to Home Screen or App Library Only.
The App Library is a new way to organize your iPhone’s apps, introduced in iOS 14. To find it, simply swipe all the way to the very last, rightmost page of your iPhone’s home screen.
Once there, you’ll see all of your apps organized into several folders. These folders are created based on what sort of apps you have — you might see a folder for games, another folder for shopping, and another folder for ordering food, for instance.
You can’t rename the folders on this screen, nor can you choose how the apps get arranged. But there are a few ways to browse through the apps on this screen, as well as use it to edit your home screen.
Here’s how to use the App Library on your iPhone.
How to use the App Library on an iPhone to find your apps
There are a couple of ways to open apps from the App Library.
- Tap an app you see in a folder. The App Library sorts all your apps into categories, and shows you a preview of some of the apps in that category. You’ll likely see that some app icons are regular size, while others are smaller. Tap a regular size app to open it immediately, or tap the smaller icons to open and browse through the entire folder.
- Search all of your apps. Tap the search box at the top of the App Library screen to search for the app you want. In addition, you’ll see an alphabetical list of all your apps. You can scroll and tap the app you want to start it. This is a handy feature, and is the best way to see all your apps.
How to use the App Library to hide apps from the home screen
One of the most powerful advantages of the new App Library is that it allows you to hide apps from the home screen.
Whether you want to hide rarely used apps, or are striving for a minimalist home screen with just a handful of your most essential apps, you can banish any unwanted apps to the App Library. This is a handy way to streamline your iPhone without actually deleting apps completely.
1. On the home screen, tap and hold an app icon you want to hide until its pop-up menu appears.
2. Tap “Remove App.”
3. In the pop-up window, tap “Move to App Library.”
The app will now disappear from the home screen, but it’s not completely gone — it’s still in the App Library, just as it was before. If you want to start that app, you now need to find it in the App Library.
How to restore an app to the home screen
If you change your mind, you can easily recover an app that you removed from the home screen.
1. Go to the App Library.
2. Find the app you want to restore. You can do that with the automatic folders, or by using the search bar.
3. Tap and hold the app’s icon until the pop-up menu appears.
4. Tap “Add to Home Screen.”
It’s official! iPadOS 15 is available, and anyone with an iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, or iPad Pro with the proper specifications can upgrade to the latest version of the iPad operating system. Today we’ll look at two new features built into iPadOS 15: Widgets and App Library. Can your iPad run iPadOS 15? Here’s the answer!
Which iPads can run iPadOS 15?
All versions of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (1st through 5th generation) are easily updated to iPadOS 15, as are the 9.7-inch, 10.5-inch, and all three generations of 11-inch iPad Pro.
For the classic iPad, the 5th through 9th generations can be upgraded to the new operating system version. The iPad mini 4th through 6th generation have the power to handle iPadOS 15, as do the 2nd through 4th generation iPad Air models.
How to install iPadOS 15
Whether you’ve been a member of the developer or public betas of iPadOS 15, or you’re currently running iPadOS 14, the installation method is the same.
- Launch Settings
- Tap on General
- Next, tap on Software Update
- Now tap the Download and Install button at the bottom. In the event that you see the iPadOS 14.8 box, scroll down and select Upgrade to iPadOS 15.
- Then, tap the Download and Install button.
- Follow the on-screen prompts to finish installing iPadOS 15.
It’s a good idea to make sure that your iPad is backed up before upgrading. The easiest way — and one we recommend — is to use iCloud Backup.
- Launch Settings
- Tap on Apple ID (it’s the top item in Settings)
- Next, tap iCloud
- Now, tap iCloud Backup and ensure it is On
if you have iCloud Backup on all the time (a good idea!), the iPad is being backed up nightly. The date and time of the last backup are visible when you tap iCloud Backup:
When connected to a Wi-Fi network, the Back Up Now button is highlighted and backs up your iPad with a tap.
Widgets
Now that you’ve upgraded to iPadOS 15, let’s talk about one of the new features: Widgets. If you’ve used iOS 14 on your iPhone, you’ll know how these app “windows” work, providing selected data in a box that’s bigger than an app icon, but smaller than a window.
iPadOS 15 widgets come in the same sizes as iPhone widgets, but there are also what are called “XL” widgets. At this time, only a few apps provide XL widgets. More app developers will probably create these XL widgets for their apps to make the best use of the larger screen real estate provided by the iPad.
The most fascinating widgets are Smart Stacks, which put a number of your most-used apps into one widget that “rotates.” See that Photos widget at left in the screenshot above? With a downward or upward swipe over that widget, I also see my Messages favorites, Notes, and a daily update from a favorite app, It’s a great way to see things in a small window on my iPad Pro screen that may entice me to click to view more.
How useful are iPadOS 15 widgets? From my viewpoint, they’re very useful! I never felt the need to use widgets on my iPhone, but I love them on the larger screen of the iPad.
Special widgets
Apple has created some special widgets that I really like. The first is the Find My widget. It’s perfect if you want to keep track of people or items. I use it to keep track of everything I have an AirTag attached to. With a glance at the widget, I know what is currently with me (wallet, keys, iPhone) and what is elsewhere (trailer, iPad, Mac). A click brings up the detail I need.
Another special widget is the one for the App Store. It’s useful to see at a glance what is new or exciting in the App Store. The Game Center widget comes in that XL size, and is designed to continue game play in a recently played game with a tap.
Finally, one of my favorites is the Shortcuts Folder widget. Add your favorite Shortcuts to this widget, and the power of iPadOS Shortcuts is a tap away.
How to add a widget
Are you familiar with how to get your iPad or iPhone screen into “wiggle mode”? That’s the Home Screen editing mode, which is enabled with a simple touch-and-hold gesture on the screen. In iPadOS 15, doing this adds a few buttons to your screen. There’s a plus sign ( + ) button in the upper left of the screen, and a Done button in the upper right.
To add a widget, just tap that plus sign button. A list of available widgets appears;
Search, select and set up widgets in this window
Tap on any app widget to select it. Most have multiple options for size and the information displayed. Once you’ve selected the widget and settings, there is a button at the bottom of your selection to “Add Widget”:
In this screenshot, I’m adding the “On This Day” widget from the Day One journaling app to my Home Screen. Now with a tap on the widget, Day One shows me what I have written on any particular date over the years without having to launch the app and select “On This Day” first. Widgets are timesavers!
App Library
Much in the same way that iPadOS 15 added a useful iOS 14 feature to the iPad with Widgets, the App Library is another iOS 14 feature making its debut on the iPad.
What’s the purpose of App Library? It automatically organizes a user’s apps into an easily navigated view, and brings forth apps that might be helpful to a user at any time. Users are also able to hide and reorder Home Screen pages.
Accessing App Library
From the Home Screen, swipe left one or more times until the App Library screen appears:
Initially, App Library displays apps by genre: Suggestions, Productivity & Finance, Utilities, etc… To view an alphabetical listing of apps, click in the App Library search field at top.
There’s another way to quickly access App Library. By default, iPadOS 15 puts an App Library icon in the Dock at the bottom of the iPad screen:
Of course, you may not want to have that App Library icon in your Dock. I got used to it very quickly, but some people find it totally annoying. There is a toggle in Settings for showing and hiding the App Library in the Dock:
- Launch Settings
- Select Home Screen & Dock
- Toggle the “Show App Library in Dock” setting
Other App Library settings
Other settings for App Library are available. While in the Home Screen & Dock settings,
In the past, all new apps downloaded from the App Store have been added to the Home Screen. Now it’s possible to have newly downloaded apps added to the App Library, but not to the Home Screen by default.
That toggle to show the App Library in the Dock is visible above, and you’ll note that there’s also a toggle for showing recent and suggested apps in Dock. If you want to have apps show their notification badges (those little red dots…) in the App Library, that’s possible with a click.
More about iPadOS 15
Want to know more about iPadOS 15? We’ve already published one other article in this Get Ready for iOS 15 series to highlight Visual Lookup. Keep reading The Rocket Yard to get more hints and tips on the latest iPad operating system.
iOS 14 boasts many new features, and the App Library is among the most significant. As the name suggests, it is a form of organizing your iPhone apps into categories to prevent a cluttered Home Screen. No need to swipe through a lot of pages to find the app you’re looking for. You can do a lot with this new way of organizing your apps; let’s learn how to use the App Library to organize your iPhone Home Screen.
What is App Library on iPhone?
The App Library is the new feature of iOS 14 to organize all your iPhone’s apps in one place. They are automatically grouped in categories such as social, productivity, utilities, etc.
There is currently no way to rename the categories or move apps from one to another. You can scroll to see the apps or use the handy search feature.
The App Library displays all your apps in little four-square boxes. At the top-right, you’ll see the Recently Added apps.
At the top left, you will see Siri Suggestions. These are four apps intelligently recommended by Siri depending on the time of day, location, etc. The suggestions get more relevant the more you use your phone. Moreover, they are determined only by on-device data, and information about your app usage, location, habits, is not sent anywhere.
How to access App Library on iPhone
- To access the App Library, you have to swipe left on your Home Screen until last page of apps, then swipe one more time.
- You can open an app by tapping on its full-size app icon. To see all the apps in a category, tap on the small app icons.
Use the App Library to find your apps
- From the App Library, swipe down from anywhere or tap on the search bar.
- Start typing the name of the app you want to access and then tap on it when it appears. Or, scroll down the alphabetical list and tap on the app you want. You may also tap on the alphabets (A, B, C, D…) at the right edge of the screen to quickly find the desired app.
How to add an app to the App Library
By default, all of your iPhone apps are already in the App Library. So, you do not need to do anything to add an app to the Library.
If you wish to remove an app from the App Library, it will be deleted from your iPhone altogether.
Delete an app from the App Library
- Go to App Library and Long–press on any blank area to enter jigglemode. Then tap on the small ‘x‘ on an app icon to delete it.
- To delete an app from a folder, open the respective folder by tapping on the App Library’s small app icons. Next, long-press anywhere within the folder to enter jiggle mode. Then, tap on the “x” icon to delete an app.
- To move an app from a folder back to the home screen, you can manually drag and drop it to the home screen. Or, long-press the app icon and select Add to Home Screen. Once you do this, you’ll be able to view and open the app from your home screen.
Too many apps on the Home Screen can give a cluttered look. Or, you might want to keep certain apps out of sight for whatever reason. The App Library can help you with this. If you want to remove an app from your iPhone Home Screen, here’s is how you can do it.
How to use the App Library to hide apps from iPhone home screen
- Long-press on an app icon on the iPhone Home Screen.
- Tap on Remove App.
- Tap Remove from Home Screen.
The app will now only be visible in the App Library and Siri Search.
Whenever you download new apps, you can choose to have them added to the App Library only and not appear on the Home screen. Here’s how:
Download apps to the App Library
- Go to Settings → Home Screen.
- Here you can select where you want the new app downloads to show. Tap on AppLibraryonly.
Notification badges are the red indicators that show you there’s something new waiting for you in an app. You can choose to show or hide these badges in the App Library.
How to show or hide notification badges in App Library
- Go to Settings → Home Screen.
- Depending on your preference, toggle on or off the option for Show in App Library.
Organize your home screen using App Library
So, this was all about how to use the App Library on iPhone and iPad. You might also like to check out more about iOS 14 widgets. Let us know in the comments if you have any further questions.
– Quickly find the app you’re looking for
– Tips and tricks to getting more from the feature
(Pocket-lint) – Apple introduced a new feature on iOS 14 in September 2020 to help you manage the sometimes unwieldy array of apps that you’ve downloaded.
Called App Library, it offers the potential to change the way you access apps on your iPhone and makes it easier to find your favourite or most-used apps quickly. It certainly helps avoid those painstaking moments of remembering which Home Screen or folder you’ve put the app you need to use at that moment in time.
You can’t turn the App Library feature off, but you can still minimise its usage if you aren’t ready to embrace it. As we’ve found though, once you start to use it, you’ll use it more and more and wonder how you ever coped without it.
What is Apple’s App Library and where to find it in iOS 14?
The App Library is found by swiping right to left on the last Home Screen page that currently holds apps on your iPhone. That could be two swipes, it could be dozens of swipes, and will depend on how many apps you have installed on your Apple iPhone (the feature is not available on the iPad in iPadOS 14).
As the name suggests, all your apps are stored in the App Library and are presented in a number of folders that are based on the categories found in the App Store. So, Instagram and Twitter are in the Social folder for example, while YouTube is in Entertainment.
Using the App Library
The apps within the App Library are presented in category folders with three larger App icons, along with four smaller ones in a square grid in the bottom right corner.
You can’t change the name of the folders or arrange the order in which they appear, but there are some quick actions to save you always having to scroll through all the apps to find the one you need.
To help you get to the apps you are most likely to want to use, there are two further folders: Suggestions and Recently Added. Suggestions uses onboard AI learning to try and give you the top four apps that you might be looking for, while Recently Added features apps you’ve just downloaded for quicker access.
Within each category, the most popular apps will be highlighted, as one of the three larger app icons, and the order of the categories changes slightly each week depending on what you’ve been using the most to save you constantly having to scroll to the bottom of the screen to find that apps you always use.
To access the rest of the apps in the folder you simply click the smaller icons and that reveals all the apps in that category as it normally does when using folders on iOS.
Searching the App Library
Beyond tapping on the icons, you can search the App Library via the large search bar at the top of the screen. Start typing and the list reduces. Alternatively, the search page also offers an alphabetical list of your apps with a quick access alphabet down the right-hand side that you can use to jump to the start of a letter.
Getting to the App Library quicker
If, like us, you’ve been trying to manage your apps on your Home Screen pages for some time, you might find that with the App Library you don’t need all the home screen pages any more.
Rather than individually delete an app or spend time moving your apps around in some laborious process to clear a Home Screen page, you can quickly hide a Home Screen to allow yourself to get to the App Library with less right to left swipes.
To do so, long press on the Home Screen to force the apps to “jiggle” and then tap on the Home Screen dots just above the dock – the number of dots will correspond to the number of Home Screen pages you have.
Taping on the dots reveals an “Edit Pages” screen where you can see all the Home Screen pages you have. Beneath each one you there is a circular tick icon which you can untick to hide the page. The good news is, is that if you change your mind you can quickly tick the box again and bring the Home Screen page back at a later date.
Once you’re happy with the results, you simply press Done, and your good to go.
We’ve found at first you’ll likely want to hide one or two pages – probably the apps that you rarely use – but over time we’ve slowly reduced the number of Home Screen pages.
You do always have to have at least one Home Screen page, however.
Moving apps from the Home Screen to the App Library
Where the App Library is really helpful is that it allows you to hide those apps that you don’t use that often, but want to keep on your phone.
If you plan to keep a number of Home Screen pages rather than deleting the app completely from your iPhone, you can move it to the App Library so it doesn’t show on a Home Screen.
To do this, long hold on the Home Screen to force the apps to “jiggle” and then press on the “-” icon as if you were deleting the app. But instead of tapping on the “Delete App” instruction, tap on “Move to App Library” instead.
The App will be removed from the Home Screen page, but not deleted from your iPhone.
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Where do newly downloaded Apps go?
When running iOS 14 or later, you’ll notice that the first app you download afterwards won’t appear on the Home screen as they’ve always done previously.
That’s because newly downloaded apps don’t appear on the Home Screen anymore, but instead appear in the Recently Downloaded folder in the App Library instead.
It’s puzzling at first, but can be fixed in the Settings app if you don’t like that approach. To make sure newly downloaded apps are still added to your Home Screen go to Settings > Home Screen and tick whether you want the newly downloaded app to either “Add to Home Screen” or “App Library Only”.
You’ll also find that this page allows you to set whether you want to show Notification Badges in the App Library. We’ve tried it and it gets very cluttered very quickly as if it’s not a popular app it doesn’t show which app the notification is for.
App icons without names
On the whole, the App Library is easy to use and very logical in its approach, but something to bear in mind if you plan to use it a lot is that it removes the names of your apps on that first glance.
That might be okay for popular apps with memorable icons – Twitter or Instagram – but it’s not very helpful for games or apps that don’t really have a logo that you’ll recognise.
Expect some app icons to change as they realise that as a tiny square, the app logo doesn’t really shout as to what is actually is.
App Library is something we weren’t expecting from Apple this fall, but here it is. The iOS 14 comes with tones of improvements, including home screen management using the on-device intelligence and of course based on your usage pattern. With App Library, it’s relatively simple to keep the home screen decluttered without deleting any app. To be honest, no one has time to organize their home screen, and even if you’re doing this, you’ll keep the useful apps on the first app page; the rest of them will be floating randomly. After spending hours to bifurcate and personalizing the iPhone home screen with utterly importantly applications, the newly downloaded applications can create the same chaos.
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The home screen can stay organized as long as you don’t download new applications, and that’s impossible for anyone to avoid downloading applications. Rather, changing the settings of the iPhone is recommended. What you can do is, ask iPhone to directly add the newly downloaded apps into the App Library, this will keep the home screen clear, and you can download as many apps you want, without messing the home screen.
How to Add New Apps to App Library [iOS 14 or Later]
The iPhone Settings app lets you change the settings, and only add new apps to the App Library rather than on the home screen.
- Go to the Settings app on the iPhone.
- Scroll down to the Home Screen, tap on it.
Home screen settings on iPhone settings app
New Recently Downloaded app to App Library only on iPhone
In addition, the App Library contains a Recently Added card, which stores all the recently downloaded applications, for easy access.
Recently Downloaded Apps Not Showing on Home Screen
The iOS 14 brings a few different concepts; one of them is App Library. Understanding them is merely easy, however, if you don’t, it’ll definitely create chaos. In the above section, we’ve enlisted the steps to add the applications to the app library, not on the home screen.
Meaning, once you choose App Library Only option, from that time, the iPhone will store all the newly downloaded applications directly in the App Library, instead of the home screen. I recently downloaded apps not showing on the home screen, verify the settings mentioned below.
- Navigate to the Settings app.
- Tap Home Screen.
- Make sure, you must have to select Add to Home Screen.
- Now, Your All apps will be shown on the iPhone home screen, that is recently downloaded.
How to Hide Notifications Badge to App Library
If you don’t want to see the red circles for every unread notification on App icons, the new settings let you hide the notifications badge in the App Library. Here’s how it can be done.
- Go to the Settings app.
- Swipe down to Home Screen.
Home screen settings on iPhone settings app
show or Hide Notification badges in App Library
Now, Your App Library screen is much clearer than before. Hope you find the important Home Screen Settings for your iPhone after Update to the latest iOS.
Use App Library on your Apple iPhone 7 iOS 14.0
All apps on your phone are automatically organised by category in the App Library. You can set your phone to display newly downloaded apps on both the home screen and in the App Library and also adjust the number of home screens for a better overview of your apps.
1. Find ” Home Screen “
1. Find ” Home Screen “
Press Home Screen .
2. Select App Library settings
To add new downloaded apps to both the home screen and App Library, press Add to Home Screen .
Apple’s new App Library should help iPhone users trying to get stuff done stay a little more focused.
Introduced at WWDC 2020, Apple’s iOS answer to Android’s app drawer makes its debut in iOS 14. It’s called App Library and works by gathering all your apps inside folders to make it easier to find the apps you want without endless swiping between screens.
What did Apple say about App Library?
Speaking at last week’s WWDC, Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said:
“Today’s home screen worked great, but as we get more and more apps, we can end up with this, lots and lots of pages, and we tend to forget what’s beyond the first couple.”
Federighi continued to observe:
“Now like you, I have muscle memory built for the first page or two, but when it comes to all of these pages, well honestly, I’ve lost track of where a lot of things are and that’s where the App Library comes in.”
What does App Library do?
The App Library sits at the end of your Home screen pages and automatically organizes your apps in one easy to handle view consisting of logically named folders of app.
If you have lots of home pages full of apps, you can choose to hide some or all of them, so you end up with just a couple of pages of the apps you use most often, with the App Library kept in a page at the end.
[Also read: How to use widgets on iPhone and iPad]
The idea is that you can find the apps you need in just a couple of swipes and taps. (Though you can always ask Siri to open a specific app and doing so is often faster.)
At the top of the App Library you’ll find a search field that lets you find named apps.
Who benefits from App Library?
Most iPhone users should benefit, particularly if you use your iPhone to get work done. For example, you might gather all your enterprise-focused apps on your first or second Home page, and use App Library to find new or lesser-used apps.
This kind of organization should reduce the amount of fruitless swiping and squinting time as you wade through multiple app pages to find what you need. This should help workers stay more focused and productive.
How do I hide app pages?
You can hide pages containing apps you don’t use very often. To do so, just press and hold on the display until the icons begin to jiggle around, and then tap the dots at the bottom of the screen.
You’ll see a zoomed-out view of all your app pages – just select those you wish to hide by tapping the interactive circle you see below them. You will need to maintain one page, of course.
Don’t worry – all the apps kept on those pages will still be available to you through Apple curated collections in the App Library.
The idea is that most iPhone users will gather their most frequently used apps across one or two pages and use their App Library for the rest.
How can I hide specific apps?
Long press to make the icons jiggle and you can select individual app icons to drop them on the App Library page where they will be automatically filed. Don’t forget, if you want to hide multiple apps, just long-press and select an app, keep holding your finger down and use a second finger to tap on other apps to scoop them all together to the App Library page.
You can also drag apps out of the App Library if you want to give them more prominence on one of your curated home pages.
How do I open an app in App Library?
From Home, swipe left and keep swiping until you get to App Library. You’ll see the folders Apple has created – Collaboration, Productivity or Apple Arcade, for example.
Tap one of these to look inside. When you do, you’ll see that the apps in that category you’ve used most often are gathered at the top of the collection, making them that much easier to find. Tap them in the usual way.
You can also search for apps and access an A-Z listing of app names.
Has Apple made this intelligent?
At the top of the collection of folders you’ll see two called Suggestions and Recently Added.
- Suggestions uses on-device intelligence and attempts to furnish you with access to the apps you are most likely to need to use next.
- Recently Added combines all the apps you’ve most recently introduced to your iPhone.
You can also search for an app name in the search field or tap to explore an alphabetical list of your apps. And don’t forget, you can still use Siri to launch apps you know the name of.
How do I stop newly downloaded apps from appearing on pages?
To maintain the fight against on-screen clutter, an App Store setting prevents newly downloaded apps from appearing on your Home screen and places them automatically inside your App Library.
This is a Setting inside Settings>Home Screen>New App Downloads, which can be added to Home Screen or only to App Library.
App Library will come in useful to most iPhone users. Please let me know how it goes once you begin to use it.
Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
Jonny is a freelance writer who has been writing (mainly about Apple and technology) since 1999.
Apple finally caved and gave us a proper App Library inside iOS. In this guide, we’ll show you how to use App Library on iPhone like a pro…
Since day one, Android phones have always had an app drawer, a place where ALL your apps live. With this way of doing things, you can have hundreds of apps installed on your phone but only a select few on any of your home screens.
This means your phone’s screen is less cluttered and only contains the apps you use regularly.
All the apps you don’t use very often live inside the app drawer which can be accessed by swiping up on most Android phones.
For the longest time, Apple did not allow this. If you downloaded an application, it was plonked on your homescreen. And this meant lots of clutter and the necessity for folders. So many folders.
However, Apple’s iOS platform now has an honest-to-goodness App Library, so you can download as many apps as you like without cluttering up your homescreen.
Home Screen pages can display widgets that are customised for work, travel, sports, entertainment, and other areas of interest. At the end of the Home Screen pages is the App Library, a new space that automatically organises all of a user’s apps into one simple, easy-to-navigate view, and intelligently surfaces apps that may be helpful in the moment. Users can choose how many Home Screen pages to display and easily hide pages for quicker access to the App Library.
And in this post, we’ll show you how to use App Library for iPhone like an absolute pro.
How To Access Your iPhone’s App Library
Apple introduced App Library inside its iOS 14 update. You can find App Library by scrolling the very last home screen – just keep swiping left and you’ll see it.
When you locate App Library, you’ll see that it is a neat collection of all of your applications stored neatly in labeled folders. You will have folders labeled with Suggestions, Recently Added, and Most Used.
Above your neatly organized apps, you’ll see a search bar. You can use this search bar (and Siri) to search inside your iPhone’s App Library and quickly find and open applications.
For instance, if you type Google into the App Library search bar, it will pull all of your Google apps onto the screen – things like Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Docs, and whatever other Google apps you have running on your iPhone.
Siri Suggestions Inside App Library
The first folder you’ll see inside App Library is called Suggestions. This folder is curated by Siri’s machine learning. After weeks of using your iPhone, Siri gets to know your habits and how you use your iPhone.
It will then add applications that it thinks are relevant to Suggestions based on the time of day and/or the frequency of use. If you ALWAYS check the news in the morning, for instance, your favorite news app will be front and center when you first open your iPhone in the morning.
Or, if you go running at a certain time every day, or every other day, Suggestions might put Strava front and center. Suggestions is designed to make finding the apps you use most often easier and more intuitive.
You cannot change the names of the folders, however, as Apple’s AI pulls all the information from the App Store. This isn’t too much of an issue, though, as the folders tend to cover all the bases – from recently added to most used applications and games.
Search For Apps Inside App Library
The search function inside App Library is actually really powerful. You can quickly find specific apps or types of apps by using simple keywords like “Games” or “Google” or a specific developer’s name to pull its apps (like Microsoft or Apple).
When you tap the search bar in App Library, it will immediately pull in all of the applications installed on your iPhone. From here, you can scroll through them, sort them by name, or get more specific with search by using keywords.
One really cool feature of App Library, especially when you’re scrolling through all of the apps installed on your iPhone, is that you can quickly delete applications right there and then – just press down on the app you want to delete and then select DELETE APP.
This is great for when you want to free up storage on your iPhone. You’ll know which apps you seldom use, so when you spot them in App Library, you can quickly delete them. I use this for deleting games ALL THE TIME, as they take up so much room on my iPhone.
Use App Library To Tidy Up Your iPhone’s Home Screen
Before iOS 14, you had to store ALL your apps across your home screens. Apple brought folders to iOS many moons ago, but this didn’t go far enough for many users.
Prior to App Library, those that run lots of apps always had cluttered, messy home screens. With App Library, however, you can now run super-clean home screens on your iPhone.
You can let App Library house 90% of your applications and just keep your essential apps running on your home screen. I literally have 10 apps on my home screens and a couple of widgets. I prefer my home screens to look clean.
To remove an app from your iPhone’s home screen, simply long-press on it and then select REMOVE APP.
Previously, this would have deleted the app. But thanks to App Library, the app can now have an existence hidden away inside App Library, keeping your home screens nice and clean.
This organizational tool for iPhone is a godsend. My only question is why did it take 14 iterations of iOS to bring this to the fold? This is a feature that iPhones should have had from the very beginning, just like Android.
Is App Library Available For iPad?
App Library was one of iOS 14’s best new features. But for whatever reason, Apple has opted not to bring to iPad. This means, if you want to use App Drawer, it is only available on iPhone.
iPadOS 14 didn’t get Apple’s new home screen widgets feature either.
Again, I have no idea why it didn’t, nor why Apple decided NOT to bring App Drawer to iPad. My only hope is that Apple sees the error of its ways and gets App Library ready for deployment inside iPadOS 15.
Once you install iOS 14, you’ll find the App Library to the right of your last home screen. Just keep swiping and you’ll soon be there. You don’t have to organize this screen. In fact, you can’t organize it.
How do I rearrange apps on iOS 14?
Move and organize apps on iPhone
- Touch and hold any app on the Home Screen, then tap Edit Home Screen. The apps begin to jiggle.
- Drag an app to one of the following locations: Another location on the same page. …
- When you’re finished, press the Home button (on an iPhone with a Home button) or tap Done (on other iPhone models).
Can you change app icons on iOS 14?
Alongside the release of iOS 14 in September, the ability to set custom app icons using the Shortcuts app went viral. iPhone users were enamored by support for home screen widgets in iOS 14, and they quickly turned to the Shortcuts app as a way to further customize their home screen aesthetic with custom icons.
Can you move pages in iOS 14?
Long-press an app icon and drag it from the App Library to move it to one of your Home Screen pages. You can also enter jiggle mode directly from the App Library and easily drag an app to the Home Screen.
Why can’t ti rearrange apps iOS 14?
Press on the app until you see the submenu. Choose Rearrange Apps. If Zoom is disabled or it did not resolve, Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > 3D and Haptic Touch > turn off 3D Touch – then hold down on the app and you should see an option at the top to Rearrange Apps.
Is there an easy way to organize apps on iPhone?
It’s pretty simple: Once you’ve held down on an app so they’re all wiggling, drag that app down with your finger to an empty area on the screen, and with another finger tap another app, which will group itself with the first. Repeat as necessary.
How do you customize iOS 14?
- Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone (it’s already preinstalled).
- Tap the plus icon in the top right corner.
- Select Add Action.
- In the search bar, type Open app and select the Open App app.
- Tap Choose and select the app you want to customize. …
- Tap the three dots in the upper right corner.
How can I get iOS 14?
Install iOS 14 or iPadOS 14
- Go to Settings > General > Software Update.
- Tap Download and Install.
How do I make shortcuts faster on iOS 14?
How to speed up load times on custom iOS 14 icons
- First, open up your Settings Menu.
- Head down to Accessibility. Image: KnowTechie.
- Find the Motion section under Vision. Image: KnowTechie.
- Toggle on Reduce Motion.
How do I hide home screens on iOS 14?
To do this in iOS 14, touch and hold any empty spot on the Home screen to enter jiggle mode. Then tap the lozenge around the dots that represent your Home screens. In the Edit Pages screen, tap the checkmark under any Home screen to hide it (or tap an empty circle to add a checkmark and show that Home screen).
How do I change my screen on iOS 14?
It’s simple! To get started, just press and hold a blank space on your home screen until the apps start to jiggle. In the upper left corner, you’ll see a plus sign. Tap it and you can scroll through a list of available widgets for the apps on your phone.
How do you multitask on iOS 14?
Use two fingers and pinch to zoom the window smaller or larger. You can also double-tap to quickly maximize or minimize the window’s size. When you are done, you can tap once on the PIP to bring up controls.
How do you get jiggle mode on iOS 14?
Press the Digital Crown (the knob on the side), then tap and hold any app icon until the apps begin to jiggle. After that you can hold and drag any app icon to a new location. When you’re done, press the Digital Crown again. You can also arrange Apple Watch app icons using your iPhone.
Can you organize iPhone apps on Computer 2020?
Click on the Apps tab and you can choose which apps to sync, as well as click-and-drag them into the order you want, create new app folders (just like you would on your iPhone), or hover your cursor over an app and click on the X button at the top left to delete it. …
by Sophie Green Updated on 2021-11-12 / Update for iOS 14
With the new release of the latest iOS 15, Apple again goes for some exciting home screen features, including the App library. The App library sits on the last home page and has every app installed on your mobile. This feature causes many discussions. Many people ask frequently for how to disable App Library iOS 15. In this article, we provide you some of robust and straightforward methods, along with step-by-step details of how to turn off the App library.
Part 1: How Can You Disable App Library iOS 15
Most of the time, we can delete an app that we don’t like on our mobile phone. But unfortunately, this is not the case with the App library. It is a built-in feature, so there is no way you can delete it off permanently. However, a couple of settings can hide your app library. In this article, we bring some methods to help you use it less, though you cannot disable App Library at present.
Don’t Add New Apps To App Library
If you don’t want to use App Library, you could stop adding any new app to your library. This setting is linked to where new apps get downloaded. This is how you can change the settings.
- Navigate to Settings on your mobile. Click Home screen.
Select the option Add to Home Screen.
Make Apps displayed On Home Pages
App library is designed to hold all of your apps in a single folder. However, you can find all the apps on your home page too. So if you don’t want to use the App library, you should not hide any home page.
- Press and hold on to an empty area of your home screen. And click the dots that appear on the bottom of the screen.
Click on the circles of your hidden home pages. Then Done.
Use Search On your iPhone
If you want to turn off app library on iphone, you can use the search option on your device to find anything from your mobile quickly instead. The search bar also provides you with suggestions and results while you type your query.
- Swipe down from the center of your home screen.
You will get a research bar field at the top of the screen. Enter what you are looking for.
Part 2: How To Fix App Library Not Working in iOS 15
App library is a new exciting feature introduced in the version of iOS 15. Sometimes you get into some problems, and your App library does not work rightly on your mobile devices when upgrading to latest iOS 15. We bring you the simple methods that can help you fix your App library effectively. If you can’t open the app library all of a sudden, first check the newest update, then:
Restart device
Sometimes you were navigating in your App library with quite ease, and then all of a sudden, it stops working. The problem can be fixed by restarting your iPhone. Press and hold the Volume down button and the side button, and then slide to power off your iPhone. After a few seconds, turn you iPhone on.
Reset All Settings
Even after restarting your device, you cannot get proper access issues with your App library; then, you can reset all settings. This might be helpful to repair any corrupt settings that cause issues in the proper functioning of the App library.
- Go to Settings on your phone. Tap to General > Reset.
Click on Reset All Settings.
Fix Your iOS System with Reiboot
You can always fix your iOS system, including App library yourself, with quite ease using professional software. Tenorshare ReiBoot is a great iOS recovery software and perfectly applicable for various models and versions of Apple.
Download and install Tenorshare ReiBoot software on your Windows or Mac. Run the software and connect it with your iPhone.
Click Start > Standard Repair to use the iOS system recovery tool. Then download the latest firmware package.
After it finishes, click Start Standard Repair, which starts recovery. Within a few minutes, your iOS device will reboot automatically without data loss.
Summary
App Library is an exciting feature for some people while others want to disable the App library iOS 15. At the end of this article, we are sure that you can now avoid the app library if you do not like it. With our fixing solutions, you can also now fix your App library not working with quite ease. Tenorshare Reiboot provides you a complete solution of your all kind of iOS recovery problems.
Q1: How To Remove An App From App Library
Go to App Library and hold the app icon you want to delete. Then select Delete App.
Q2: How To Show Notification Badges in App Library
Go to Settings and tap on Home screen. Turn the Show in App Library On.