iPhone stock apps can be removed by just putting them into special folder, new trick shows

A new trick shows a quick way of getting rid of the stock apps that might be cluttering up your iPhone screen — at least for a while.

The iPhone comes with a range of apps that are stuck on the phone, and can't be deleted like others. While some are key to the phone — like the Phone app itself — others like Stocks are less well-regarded.

But the new trick shows how you can hide those unused stock apps with just a quick trick using some folders.

You begin by putting the app into a folder. It doesn’t matter which. (It’s likely that it’ll already be hidden in one — if it is, you can just leave it there.)

Now head into the folder, and press on hold on the app so that you can enter “jiggle mode” and move it around.

Once you can pick it up, do so and drag it into the next page in the folder, which will probably be empty. Drop it into there.

Now pick up the app again and drag it over once more (which should mean that you’ve added two extra dots at the bottom). When it’s in there, get hold of the app, drag it all the way to the right and keep hold of it — then tap the home button at the same time.

When you do that, the whole thing should disappear away.

If you need to find any of the removed apps, then they’ll show up in the search.

The trick doesn’t remove the apps permanently, since they’ll come back when the phone is restarted. And since they stay on the phone they will still take up storage space.

But it’s just the latest way of tricking the phone into at least temporarily removing an app. Many of the ways to do so rely on such tricks, using folders to make the unwanted apps apparently disappear.

Many of the apps might seem useless. But Tim Cook has said in the past that many of the apps are required for other parts of the phone to work, and that it won’t be able to remove them without rewriting the operating system — but that the company could look at getting rid of them in the future.