We discuss the difficulties involved in deleting Newsstand, Stocks, Game Center and other pre-installed Apple apps on the iPhone and iPad, together with ways to get round Apple's restrictions.
How to delete an iOS app or game from your iPad or iPhone
Okay, let's start with the basic deletion process. (This is for the beginners. If you know how this works, skip ahead to the next step.)
Start your iPhone or iPad and go to the Home screen (press the Home button below the screen, or touch all five fingers to the screen and draw them inwards like a claw.) Find the icon for the app you want to delete, and press and hold it for a few seconds. It (and all the other icons on the screen) will start to wobble gently, and a small cross will appear in a grey circle by each. Tap the cross, then confirm you want to delete the app.
The app icons start wobbling...
Tap the cross and it'll ask you to confirm the deletion
And this is what it looks like in iOS 6:
How to delete an iOS app from iTunes on your Mac
If you sync your iPhone or iPad with a Mac on a regular basis, you'll need to remove the app from the Mac too. Open iTunes, make sure you're in the library section (if you're in the iTunes Store, click on Library at the top right of the screen), then select Apps from the dropdown menu at the top left. Find the icon of the app you want rid of, right-click it and select Delete.
How to recover a deleted iPhone or iPad app in iTunes
If you ever change your mind and want to get the deleted app back, don't worry - Apple's App Store will remember that you've bought it already. Find the app on the App Store and it will offer the option to download it once again, instead of the usual price tag or 'FREE'. Click download and you won't be charged again.
Can I delete an app from my App Store account permanently?
But what if you want to remove the app from your App Store account permanently?
This might seem like an odd thing to ask, but when you're updating apps, you don't want your list of purchased apps to be clogged up with free apps you tried once then deleted. If you wanted to reinstall an app you deleted a while ago, you may find yourself skimming through a huge list of tried and discarded apps, particularly if your app attention span is as short as ours.
Apple fans have been crying out for this feature for a while, but sadly at present it isn't possible.
If you don't want your updates clogged up with deleted apps, however, you can just look at the ones on your iOS device. If you're looking at a view of updates with 'Purchased' at the top, hit the 'Updates' button at the top left.
If you're worried about other people who use your iPhone or iPad (or share your iTunes account) seeing embarrassing or adult apps on your purchase history, the best policy is probably to log out from your iTunes/App Store account when you hand over the device. Then if they need to download an app you can type in the password for them.
How to remove Newsstand, Game Center and other pre-installed stock Apple apps
Not everyone likes Apple's own apps, but it's not easy to get rid of them; Apple doesn't allow you to simply delete Newsstand, Safari, Notes, Game Center and the rest. (We think this is rather inconsiderate policy, and it's one of the things we discuss in this article about Apple's 'monopoly'.) You can get around that, but it may not be worth the effort.
What we do, as a far simpler workaround, is hide the icons for the Apple apps we don't use, in a folder called 'Apple stuff'.
To organise apps into folders, press and hold the icon for one of them until it starts wobbling, then drag it on to the second app you want to be in the folder. iOS will automatically generate a title for the folder based on the apps' descriptions, but if you tap this name you can rename it.
Once again, here's the slightly different look in iOS 6:
Newsstand in iOS 6: For the iOS 6 users out there, you'll find that the exception to this is Newsstand, which Apple evidently loves so much that you're not (currently) permitted to hide it away in a folder. (Although some hotshots on an Apple forumreckon it can be done if you're fast enough. We haven't managed it in a dozen attempts, which suggests that our fingers are old and slow, or that Apple has patched this workaround since then.)
The original thinking may have been that Newsstand acts like a folder in its own right, and you can't nest folder inside other folders in iOS.
Other than updating to iOS 7 (which, among its many larger benefits, allows you to place Newsstand in a folder), the best solution may well be to hide Newsstand in ascreen of its own, rather than a folder. Once again, press and hold any app icon to go into the wobbly mode, then drag Newsstand to the right of the screen and hold it there until the iPhone or iPad takes the hint and moves you on to the next screen. Continue until you get to your right-most screen, then do it once more and iOS will generate an extra screen, where you can drop Newsstand.
From now on you won't even need to see Newsstand, unless you accidentally swipe too far. Phew! (You could dump the 'Apple Stuff' folder here too.)
Okay, but how do you actually delete Newsstand, Game Center and the rest of Apple's stock apps?
Officially you can't delete Apple's own pre-installed iOS apps, leaving most of us with the slightly unsatisfactory hiding methods described above. But if you're willing tojailbreak your iPhone or iPad (disclaimer: we wouldn't recommend that, since it's likely to obliterate any warranties you have with Apple and may even make your device stop working if you foul up the procedure) then you can do pretty much what you like.
Jailbroken iOS devices can access the Cydia marketplace for unauthorised iOS apps. You can search for apps related to Newsstand, but one that's used successfully by a large number of users is called NoNewsIsGoodNews. Install this app and run it, and the Newsstand 'folder' icon will be deleted. Any magazine apps you had inside Newsstand will appear loose on your home screen, and can be placed in folders as normal. Here's some more explanation of the process.
Again, if you want to delete Apple's other apps you'll need to jailbreak the iPhone, and one possibility you'll find on Cydia is called iFile, which lets you access (and delete) all the system and application files on your iPhone. Here's a video of the procedure, but as the man says, remember to back the files up before deleting them, in case you make an error and delete something vital to the running of your Apple device.
If either of these Cydia apps disappear, or you're not happy with them, run similar searches on Cydia, which has plenty of apps for reorganising the files on your iPhone or iPad. But as we've said, be cautious: you're outside Apple's fenced-in ecosystem now.
Is there any way to delete Apple apps without jailbreaking?
Having said that you need to jailbreak, there do appear to be a couple of tweaks out there that will at least temporarily delete pre-installed apps from your iPhone or iPadwithout jailbreaking, but they all involve visiting sites and accessing files that may carry risks, just as jailbreaking does.
One possibility is a site called rag3hack: accessing this site from an iOS device gives you the option to 'delete' stock Apple apps (actually it just changes the settings so that these apps will get the black cross mentioned above, letting you delete them manually). However, the next time you restart the device they'll have returned, so we're not sure this is a solution either.
I can not delete an app. that was in progress— says "waiting". there is no x in the corner ... can anyone HELP?
ReplyDeletehow to hide apps
This guide is great. It helps me a lot and I read another tutorial about this. Maybe below guide can give you another train of thought to remove app from iPhone.
ReplyDelete