Settings Icon Missing

Performing a hard reset seemed to solve my problem. I held down the Sleep/Wake button and the home button for 50 seconds. The phone took a long time to restart. When it came back, all my apps where there and there are no longer any issues.

If you still have ANY icons remaining, swipe downwards over them and bring up the search box. Search for "settings" and open the settings app if it is listed. Select settings->general->reset->reset home screen layout. That worked for me, and although all the folders and personalizations made to the home screen were gone, it brought all the icons.

A hard resent by holding both the power and home buttons did not solve my problem. However, I was eventually able to access the search feature and get to settings, and restoring the home screen to factory defaults worked to solve my problem, albeit making reassembling my home screen a necessity.

The disappearance was limited to the first and third home screen pages, the second remained normal. It occurred just following an extreme hang/sluggish period on entering airplay with my AppleTV required a soft reset (hold until slider shows up)...upon reboot the home screen pages were missing.

Slide finger down on screen to get Search Screen. Type "setting" into bar and search. Then in the Settings App > General > Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout.

Same thing just happened to me too. I was installing an app and it disappeared. I restarted my iPhone 5S running iOS 7.0.4 and half of my apps were missing including the Settings app. I restored my iPhone using factory restore http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1808 and now I'm back up and running. I then restored from my earlier backup and all is well. I hope this bug gets fixed in the next update. I have been an iPhone user since iPhone 1 and I have NEVER experienced anything like this.

BTW, thanks for the idea Joe_Fo 🙂

Hmm. Have you run the settings app recently? Try double tapping the home button to bring up open apps, maybe it is still open?

If all that fails, sounds like you'll need to find an Apple Store or maybe borrow a phone from somebody to call Apple. Or maybe you could use Skype on your regular computer to place the call? I know I waste a few bucks every month, but this is one of the reasons I've still got a landline. :(

Actually, you don't need any icons. Pick a spot around the middle of the screen and swipe down. That should bring up the search feature. Just get far enough from the top not to bring up the little summary for the day feature.

I came to this thread for the same reason - my settings icon had disappeared.

Did a hard reset - no luck.

And then I found it, lurking in one of my folders. I must have accidentally dropped it in there.

I feel a bit silly, but if you've lost an icon, take a good look in all your folders.

Try factory restore. See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1808

I finally manage to almost restore it. It wont setup properly now but I will try it again a couple of times. The restore worked the 6th or 7th time I tried it. Hopefully it will work.

😠pffff...it looks like i'm the second person, half my icons also have dissapeared.I have an ipod touch 4g.After I installed some apps, the settings, appstore, itunes, photos, music, and other icons were missing.I tried to search for the settings icon on search screen but in vain.Now all that I can do with my ipod touch 4g is only using the apps I have downloaded.I'm so desperate with this problem, if only there could be a way to solve this problem.😐

I'm having the exact same issue - iPhone 5S 7.0.4 - an app failed to update properly last night so turned the phone off and on and now the majority of built in Apple apps are missing - including the settings one - I assume you must have resolved this by now? What did you do?

Same thing happened to me last night 11/28. I kept trying to open the Facebook app and it kept crashing, so I restarted my iPhone 5s (7.0.4), when the phone restarted I lost a lot of apps, including the Messages, Phone, Settings, Notes, Itunes Apps. I still have the App Store. I restarted several times and nothing has changed.