No longer will you have to create a folder called “Extras”, put in all the unused stock apps and drag it over the last Home screen. For Apple has finally, finally added a feature in iOS 10 that lets you delete all the stock apps. Here’s how it works.
How To Delete Stock Apps
If you’ve ever deleted an app on your iPhone or iPad, you’re good to go.
Find the stock app you want to delete and tap and hold on the icon. After a couple of seconds, every app on the screen will start to wiggle. And apps will have a “x” mark in the top-right corner.
Tap that “x” and you’ll get a popup asking if you’re sure you want to delete the app. Confirm.
Do this for all the apps you want to delete.
Once you’re done, click the Home button. You’re back to your normal homescreen.
Apps You Can Delete
While most stock apps can be deleted, some still can’t. Here are the apps you can remove.
- Calculator
- Calendar
- Compass
- Contacts (contacts will stay in the Phone app)
- FaceTime
- Find My Friends
- Home
- iBooks
- iCloud Drive
- iTunes Store
- Maps
- Music
- News
- Notes
- Podcasts
- Reminders
- Stocks
- Tips
- Videos
- Voice Memos
- Watch app (Once the Apple Watch is unpaired)
- Weather
How To Get Them Back
If for some reason you want to download an app again, it’s again the same as downloading any other app.
Go to the App Store, search for the app, and once you find it, tap the “Download” button.
Non Important Technical Details
I know there’s no one who actually cares about it when I point out that you’re not actually deleting the apps. And you don’t really get back a lot of storage space. It doesn’t matter. You’re getting rid of those annoying icons off of that screen, and that’s glorious.
But take this as the interesting trivia for the day (would depend on your personal definition of interesting). All the stock apps in iOS 10 are linked to the OS software. They’re the part of the OS and most importantly, they share a lot of code in between them. Which is why there’s no way Apple can actually “delete” these apps. This also doesn’t mean that you can use third-party apps as defaults. For instance, if you delete the Mail app, Outlook doesn’t become the default email client. Any time you choose to open an email from other apps, you’ll get a warning saying you’ll need to redownload the Mail app to do this task.
When you delete them, they’re merely hidden. What is deleted though is your data. Even if you delete all apps, you don’t gain more than 150 MB space back (that’s like 3 seconds of 4K video recording).
But I digress. Stock apps are gone. It’s glorious.
Did You Get Rid Of Everything?
I’m the kind of person who relies on a lot of stock apps. I frequently use the Weather and Calendar apps. And Notes app is my default note taking apps. So I haven’t deleted all apps. Just the annoying ones – Stock, Compass, and the kind.
What about you? Share with us in the comments below.
