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Delete or Hide iPhone Native Apps?

Anyone know if there is a mechanism for deleting - or at least not showing the icons - of unused iPhone native apps? (Native apps are those supplied - built in - with the iPhone.) My "home" screens (note the plural) are filling up - which should be a "good" thing from Apple's point of view - BUT I have a number of native apps I don't use and could certainly use the home screen space they are taking up. I.e. at some point I will not be able to add 3rd party apps to my iPhone simply because I can't delete or hide those unused native app icons.

MBA SSD, MBP2, 30" AC HD Display, TimeCapsule, iPhhone 3G, NeXTCube, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Jan 28, 2009 4:42 PM

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7 replies

Jan 28, 2009 4:54 PM in response to dmccollam

You can move them to other pages.

Page 20 of the manual:

"Customizing the Home Screen
You can customize the layout of icons on the Home screen—including the Dock
icons along the bottom of the screen. If you want, arrange them over multiple Home
screens.
Rearrange icons:
1 Touch and hold any Home screen icon until the icons begin to wiggle.
2 Arrange the icons by dragging them.
3 Press the Home button to save your arrangement. "


http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/iPhone_UserGuide.pdf

Jan 30, 2009 10:53 AM in response to Courtney Walton

Thanks for your response. Indeed, I have moved unwanted apps to the current last home page; but, as I add apps to the iPhone, that last page keeps getting a higher "home page number" - and you can only have 9 pages (I think). Do you see the problem? - thare are thousands of apps but only a smallish number of them can be used because of the home page limit - and even that number is less because you can't delete the native apps stuck on the last "last page".

Feb 1, 2009 1:04 AM in response to dmccollam

Hello dmccollam,

As mentioned by the others, built-in applications cannot be deleted at this time. The page limit is has also been the same since the APP Store was opened.

Yes, there are "thousands" of APPs available on the APP Store at this time - well over 10,000. However, even if the page limit was not there, how many APPs would you want to fit on an 8GB or 16GB iPhone? A substantial number of APPs also store their data on the iPhone as they are used over time, so they consume more space the more they are used. If you filled every page full of APPs, and used them frequently, it would eventually result in a lack of "elbow-room" for any APPs (built-in or not) to function normally as you consume all of the available space with 3rd party APP data. I've spoken with one individual who filled his 16GB iPhone with downloaded books using an APP Store app in less than 2 weeks...

You can submit a desired changes or feature requests directly to Apple via the Feedback webpage:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

As with any computer, if you don't leave the OS and APPs sufficient room to work in, you may encounter unexpected and unwanted issues sooner or later.
Charles H.

Delete or Hide iPhone Native Apps?

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