You may remember when you first got your current phone and started it up, free from clutter and bloat, all fresh and new. That doesn’t last long, as we then load up app after app and start syncing all kinds of files and data to our phones, from video downloads to contact lists.
The home screen of your Android phone or iPhone probably shows evidence of this growing clutter: apps you forgot about, widgets you barely use, and shortcuts you’re not 100 percent sure about the origin of. Mobile home screens aren’t unlike the desktop screens of Windows and macOS computers, with a tendency to attract all kinds of digital detritus that builds up over time.
With that in mind, it’s worth committing yourself to some regular home screen decluttering. It’ll mean you can get around your handset more easily and to your favorite apps and most important files more quickly. You might even notice a boost in the speed with which your home screens load up.
Android
Android phone makers take different approaches to home screens and the way they’re set out. We’ll give you instructions for the stock Android that Google loads up on its Pixel phones, but if you’re using a phone from another manufacturer like Samsung or Motorola, the cleanup process shouldn’t be massively different.
Perhaps the easiest bit of decluttering you can do first is to get rid of any widgets or app shortcuts on the home screens that you don’t actually need. To do this, tap and hold on the widget or app icon, then drag it up to the top of the screen and the Remove button. This won’t delete the app (or widget) from your phone, but it does mean that it’ll no longer show up on the home screen.
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If you still want easy access to apps but find that you just have too many icons on your home screens, folders can help. To create a folder, drag an icon on top of another icon—it can be an app shortcut or a shortcut to something else, like a contact or a website. The folder will be created, and you can drag more shortcuts into it if needed. To rename a folder, tap on it to open it and then tap its name.
For example, you could create a folder of social media apps, or a folder of apps you need for work, or a folder of your most used contacts. Tap and hold, then drag individual icons to take them out of the folder or remove them from the home screen—you can also tap, hold, and drag a folder in its entirety up to the Remove button to get it off the home screen without installing the apps or shortcuts inside it.
When it comes to widgets, remember that many of them can be resized: You might want to make certain widgets smaller to free up some room, or even make them larger to keep your home screens simpler. To see whether a widget can be resized, tap and hold on it—if you can adjust the height and width of it on the screen, you’ll see handles appear at the sides.
Head to Settings and choose Wallpaper and style then App grid, and you can set how tightly spaced the icons are on your home screen, which can help with decluttering. You can also long press on a home screen, choose Customize, and turn off the Add app icons to home screen toggle switch. This way, when you install new apps, they won’t automatically get a shortcut on the home screen.
iPhone
Open up the Settings screen on iOS, and select Home Screen to decide where to put new apps: Pick App Library Only to add them to the final home screen, or Add to Home Screen to create another shortcut on a standard home screen as well. The former option is the one to go for to keep your home screens as uncluttered as possible (you can easily add app shortcuts manually, if you need to).
If there’s an app shortcut on a home screen that you want to get rid of, tap and hold, then slightly drag it to bring up the small – (minus) symbol next to it. Tap on this to remove the shortcut without deleting the app. Any website shortcuts you might have created in Safari can be removed in the same way.
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When it comes to widgets, it’s the same process: A tap, hold, and gentle drag will bring up the symbol, enabling you to remove it (you can also press and hold, then choose Edit Home Screen from the menu that comes up). Some widgets offer a choice of sizes to let you keep your home screens more neatly laid out, but you can’t do this on the fly—you need to remove the widget and add it again in a new size (press and hold on a blank part of the home screen and choose Edit Home Screen to do this).
iOS supports app shortcut folders on the home screens as well, and you can create one by tapping, holding, and dragging a shortcut until it starts shaking, then dropping it on top of another icon. Your new folder will be given a name automatically, but you can tap and hold on it and choose Rename to change this—you can also tap and hold and choose Remove Folder to get rid of it again.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the App Library that sits at the end of your home screens, the options for customization are rather limited. You can’t change the names of the categories here, or the categories that apps are put into. If you press and hold on an app, you only get the option to remove it completely from your phone, not to hide it from the App Library view (though of course you can do that in the spirit of decluttering).
You can also delete entire home screens at a time and change their order. Tap and hold on an empty area of any home screen, then tap the dots at the bottom: A new screen appears showing thumbnails of your existing home screens, and you can disable them by unchecking them, or remove them with the – (minus) symbols.