Remove Apps from the iPad’s Home Screen

Learn how to add and remove app from the iPad’s Home Screen and keep them in the iPad’s App Library.

Did you know you could add and remove apps from the iPad’s Home Screen, while keeping them available in the App Library? This was introduced with iPadOS 15 and it is a great way to place apps that you seldom use, but you do not want to delete them. You can always find them on your iPad’s App Library, but they are not taking up any Home Screen space. See how to add and remove apps from your Home Screen while keeping them in the App Library in this video for the iPad.

Video TranscriptIn this video, I’m going to show you how you can remove an app from the iPad, but still keep it in the App Library. This was introduced in iPadOS 15. Let’s see how this works. Let’s go to my iPad.

So I’m looking at my iPad here and I have this app here, the iTunes Store. What I would like to do is I would like to remove this. I no longer want to have this taken up valuable real estate on my iPad. Now, the way that we used to do this in the past is we would put it on a different Home Screen. We basically hide it by putting it away in a different Home Screen. We can also bury it in a folder.

Well on the iPad now, what we’re able to do it, this was introduced with iPadOS 15, what we’re able to do is hide an app from our home Screen Here, but we can still find it in our App Library. I have a separate video on the App Library. The App Library shows us every app that we have on our iPad. So now what I’m able to do is just have any app just showing our library, but not show on our Home Screen.

So how do we do that? Well, all we have to do is just go over to the app that we want to remove. So let’s go with our iTunes Store here. I tap and hold it, and you’re going to see Remove App. Another way of doing this as going into the jiggly mode and then tapping on the minus.

So I tap on this to remove it, and when we do that you’re going to see I have two options. I can delete the app or can remove it from the Home Screen. If I delete the app, what it’s going to do is remove it from the iPad. So I’m going to have to download it again if I want to use that app again. So if it’s an app that you never use, what you may want to do is just delete it.

But if it’s an app that you want to keep, but you do not want to have it on one of your Home Screens, then what I would recommend doing is removing it from the Home Screen. When you do that, it removes it from the Home Screen. You can see it as no longer there, but it is still on the iPad.

So how do I find it? Well we just go over to our library. I’m going to show this as a list. I just swipe down here to see a list of all of my apps. And when I swipe up, that was the iTunes app or the iTunes store, you’re going to see it as still there. So what I’m able to do is tap on this to open it back up. So it’s not on any one of my Home Screens, but it is in my library.

Let’s reverse this. I want to place this back on my Home Screen. How do I do that? Well, we just go into our library, which is what I’m looking at right here. And I just drag this out. It’s not going to remove it from the library, but what it is going to do is place it on my Home Screen here. So now we have my iTunes store again. And if I go to my library here, remember it, doesn’t remove it from the library, you’re also going to see that it is in my library. Every app resides in this library. You can’t remove it from this library unless you remove it from the iPad altogether.

So to remove an app, all we have to do is just tap and hold it, and you’re going to see Remove App, or I can go into the Jiggly mode and tap on the minus. I tap on Remove App, and from here I’m able to delete the app or remove from the home screen. If I delete the app, it’s going to remove it from the iPad altogether. It’s going to delete it. If I remove it from the Home Screen, it’s still going to be on my iPad. I’m still going to have access to it. You will find it in the App Library. If you want to take an app from the App Library back over to your home screen, you just go into the App Library and drag it over to your Home Screen.

So that’s how we remove apps from our Home Screen, as well as delete them on the iPad.