How to Delete Apps on Your iPhone or iPad
Starting with iOS 13, Apple changed the way you delete apps on your iPhone or iPad. Here we explain the different ways you can do it.
Starting with iOS 13, Apple has changed the way you delete an app on your iPhone or iPad. You can still use the “jiggling app icon” to delete an app, but now there are extra steps.
Deleting apps is important to save space and clean up your device by removing old, unused apps. So, if you haven’t updated to iOS 13 yet, have an old device, or want to learn the different ways to delete apps on modern versions of iOS, we’ll show you how.
How to Delete Apps on Your iPhone or iPad
- To access the popup menu for an app starting with iOS 13, long press on the app’s icon. Since Apple has gotten rid of 3D Touch, you don’t have to press hard to access the menu. Hold your finger down on the app’s icon where, in our example, we’re deleting the Vikings app.
- Tap Remove App on the popup menu that appears. If you’re deleting a website added to your home screen, this option will display as Delete Bookmark.
- Select Delete App on the confirmation dialog that displays. Also, note you can select Remove from Home Screen if you want to keep the app but remove it from the home screen only.
- Before removing the app you will need to confirm a second time by pressing Delete from the menu that appears.
Delete Apps Using “Jiggle Mode”
As we mentioned, you can still make the icons on your home screen jiggle and delete them. Long press on an app’s icon or tap and hold your iPhone’s background. This option was previously called Rearrange Apps, and when the apps are jiggling, you can still move them to different spots.
- Once the apps start jiggling, tap the Remove icon, which is a minus sign (–) in the top left corner of the app.
- Then tap Delete App on the confirmation dialog that displays.
- Tap the Delete option when the last verification message appears. Note that after a moment of inactivity, the app icons will stop jiggling
Delete Apps in Settings
If you’d rather not deal with the popup menu or jiggling icons, you can delete apps in Settings.
Tap Settings on the home screen.
On the Settings screen, swipe down and tap General from the menu.
Swipe down and tap the iPhone Storage option from the list of items.
It may take a bit for the list of apps installed on your phone to get generated, depending on how many apps you have installed. The list is sorted by size, but you can also sort them by name or last used date.
Scroll down the list until you find the app you want to delete. You may need to tap the Show All option if the app you want to delete isn’t listed. Once you find the app you want to remove, tap it. In this example, we’re removing the Vikings app.
Tap the Delete App button to uninstall it from your iPhone or iPad. If you’d rather not delete the app completely and not lose the app’s data, you can offload the app by selecting the Offload App option.
The Offload option allows you to free up the space used by the app’s Documents & Data. Then, you can easily reinstall the app in the future.
Tap Delete App on the confirmation dialog that displays.
Delete Apps by Sliding in Settings
- Alternatively, you can remove an app more easily by swiping it from the iPhone Storage list on your iPhone. Instead of tapping the app, slide it to the left and tap the Delete button.
- Verify the app deletion by tapping Delete on the confirmation message that appears.
Delete Apps From the Updates List in the App Store
While you’re updating apps, you may decide you want to delete an app rather than update it. You don’t need to get out of the App Store and follow one of the previous methods to delete the app. As of iOS 13, you can delete apps directly from the updates list in the App Store.
- Open the App Store and tap your profile icon to access the updates list.
- Under Available Updates or under Updated Recently, swipe left on the app you want to delete.
- Tap the red Delete button that appears on the right.
- Tap Delete App on the confirmation dialog that displays.
It’s also important to mention that the process for manually updating your apps (if you do that) has changed starting with iOS 13, too.
