How to Delete Apps on iPhone—Permanently! (iOS 16)

How do you delete apps on your iPhone? Uninstalling apps is easy once you know how.

By Cullen Thomas Updated 11/10/2022

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Are you wondering how to delete apps on your iPhone? If you need to know how to uninstall apps on iPhone, don’t worry, you’re not alone. You can remove an app from an iPhone just by long pressing on the app icon and tapping Remove App, but if you want more in-depth instructions (plus an additional method!) for how to delete apps, we’ll go step-by-step below.

How to Uninstall Apps on iPhone

To learn more about how to use apps on your iPhone, check out our Tip of the Day newsletter. If you want to learn how to remove apps from your iPhone:

Long press an app icon until the Quick Actions menu appears. You can do this with app icons on your Home Screen, or in your App Library. Either works!
If you only want to remove that one app, then tap Remove App.
Tap Delete App from the menu that appears. (The other option, Remove from Home Screen, will banish the app to your App Library.)
Confirm in the pop-up by tapping Delete.

Now you have permanently deleted this app from your iPhone or iPad. If you want to learn how to delete apps in batches, read on.

How to Delete Apps in Multiples from Your Home Screen

If you have a lot of apps you want to delete at once, the method below may be a quicker way to remove apps from your iPhone or iPad.

If you want to delete a bunch of apps, long press any blank space on your iPhone's Home Screen. Your Home Screen will enter jiggle mode. (You can also tap Edit Home Screen from the Quick Actions menu in the steps above to access jiggle mode.)
Find the app you want to remove, tap the minus icon, then tap Delete App.
Confirm by tapping Delete.
The app you just deleted will disappear from your screen. Repeat to delete even more apps. Tap Done at the upper-right corner of your screen when you're finished deleting apps.

We hope this guide has helped you uninstall apps that you don't need anymore. Still can’t delete the app you want to remove? It could be a setting preventing you from uninstalling apps on your iPhone or iPad. Check out our troubleshooting article on what to do if you can’t delete apps from an iPhone or iPad. You can also find out how to make your iPhone clear out your old apps periodically when you learn how to offload unused apps.

If you delete an app in error, you can always download them from the App Store again!

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Author Details

Cullen Thomas

Cullen Thomas is a senior instructor at iPhone Life, creating tips and guides to help users unlock the full potential of their iOS and iPhone. In addition to writing countless tip-of-the-day articles and many detailed guides, Cullen has spent ten years as an instructor in media and communications at Maharishi University, lecturing on technical and artistic subjects ranging from camera and audio hardware to story-plotting to how to manage a film crew. Cullen answers questions daily about iPhones and iOS as part of the Ask an Editor insider service, and designs curricula for iPhone Life’s online classes. As a frequent contributor to iPhone Life magazine and occasional guest on the iPhone Life podcast, Cullen likes to talk about security and privacy news, tech, gadgets, and apps, even if nobody asked.

Cullen holds a master’s degree in Cinematic Arts from the David Lynch School of Cinematic Arts. Cullen also holds two Bachelor’s degrees from Maharishi University, one in literature with an emphasis in writing and the other in Communications and Media. Cullen’s short fiction has been featured in anthologies from Amphibian Press and TANSTAAFL, and Cullen co-owns a game design company, Thoughtspike games, which builds thought-provoking puzzle games. Cullen is a sci-fi author, a coffee connoisseur, and an iPhone expert.

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