In this guide, we walk you through ten quick tips to declutter your iPhone Home Screen for better focus and productivity.
An iOS Home Screen full of random apps, widgets, and shortcuts can be distracting and make it harder to quickly locate the useful apps you need. By spending a few minutes organizing your iPhone’s Home Screen efficiently, you can create a clean, distraction-free space that helps you stay focused and accomplish more in less time. A clean Home Screen is also a great way to reduce your iPhone usage and make time for other important things.
Note that although we have listed several tips below, you don’t have to follow them all. For instance, if you hide Home Screen pages, you don’t necessarily need to hide apps in the App Library or put them in folders.
1. Delete useless apps
We all have been there where we download a gaming app or a viral new photo editing app and then forget about it after a few days as the excitement wears off. So, start your decluttering journey and free up local storage space by deleting or offloading apps you no longer use. You can always re-download them for free from the Apple App Store, later.
2. Remove all unimportant apps from the main view
Since your goal is to keep your iPhone tidy, it’s a good idea to keep only the most essential productivity apps on your first Home Screen page and drag the rest away to other Home Screen pages or tuck them away to the App Library. This is also a subtle way to keep social media apps out of view and reduce their usage.
To remove an app from the Home Screen without deleting it, touch and hold its icon and select Remove App, followed by Remove from Home Screen. You can find all apps in your iPhone App Library and Spotlight Search.
3. Hide all Home Screen pages except one
Start by removing unimportant apps from one of your Home Screen pages that you intend to keep. Then, touch and hold anywhere on the Home Screen to enter jiggle mode and tap the Home Screen page dots. Finally, uncheck all the pages you want to hide and hit Done. You’ll now be left with just one Home Screen with the important apps.
4. Keep an empty Home Screen
I have seen some users on X post screenshots of their iPhone Home Screens with no apps outside of the Dock that has their four most-used tools like Safari, Mail, Notes, and Slack. This setup looks clean and lets you view the full wallpaper without obstructions. Some people also opt for a solid black background to keep things minimalistic and distraction-free.
5. Link a Home Screen to a specific Focus
After you link a Focus mode like Work, Sleep, Fitness, Do Not Disturb, or Driving to a specific Home Screen page, only that page remains visible while the Focus is active. This keeps relevant apps in view, with the rest staying accessible from the App Library.
As an example, you can create a Home Screen page with all your essential work apps like Mail, Slack, Basecamp, Reminders, Notes, etc., and add this page to your Work Focus. When you’re in the office, activate Work Focus, and your iPhone will automatically hide all Home Screen pages away from view, except for the one with your work apps. You can even automate Focus mode to turn on or off automatically on a schedule or based on location.
To link a Home Screen page to a Focus mode, go to iPhone Settings > Focus and select a Focus. Next, tap Choose under the Customize Screens section, and create a new page or choose from your existing Home Screen pages.
6. Use app folders
I use app folders to put lesser-used applications like Compass, Measure, Stocks, Contacts, Freeform, iMovie, Pages, and iTunes Store in one spot. Many people use folders for app organization and place apps of a particular kind (i.e., banking apps or shopping apps) or by a specific developer (i.e., all Google apps) in one place. You can see what works best for you and drag one app icon over another to create Home Screen app folders.
7. Put widgets into a stack or the Today View
iOS app widgets are great, but if you go overboard, you’ll soon find yourself with several Home Screen pages full of these widgets. To address this, drag one widget over another widget of the same size to create a widget stack. You can swipe vertically on the stack to switch between your widgets.
You can also add several big and small widgets to Today View, which is a dedicated widget space accessible by swiping right on the Lock Screen or the first Home Screen.
8. Hide app labels
iOS 18 lets you hide the app and widget names from the Home Screen, streamlining things further. Touch and hold anywhere on the iPhone Home Screen and tap Edit > Customize from the top left corner. Then, select the Large style to hide labels from the Home Screen for a cleaner look.
9. Set your iPhone to add new apps directly to App Library
Imagine you took the time to create a clean Home Screen with no apps. But when you download a new app, chances are it will be added to that Home Screen, thus affecting your setup for the worse. To address this, go to iOS Settings > Home Screen & App Library and set newly downloaded apps to App Library Only. From now on, when you get new apps, they will no longer show up on your Home Screen, but only in the App Library.
10. Other tips to consider
- Use a wallpaper you love.
- Hide red notification badges from appearing over app icons. I have turned off these badges for all apps except Slack and Reminders.
- Get rid of the Search button from the Home Screen; instead, swipe down on the Home Screen to access Search.
- Hide the silent mode bell icon from the top status bar if you keep your iPhone on mute at all times.
- Turn off the battery percentage for a cleaner icon and to eliminate battery anxiety.
- Buy app icon packs and use these custom app icons to achieve a personalized look.
What other tips do you use to keep your Home Screen neat and help improve focus?