OK, so maybe the power to remove stock apps in iOS is what some might call a first-world problem. And, yes, maybe people could just tuck them into folders to tidy up their screens. But, if the Apple Insider forum is anything to go by, there are a lot of people excited by Apple’s latest revelation.
As Mashable’s Karissa Bell puts it, Apple’s finally fixing one of the most annoying parts of iOS: the way it’s forced people to put up with its Mail, Maps, Weather, Contacts and Notes apps, among others.
Look at all those deletable apps in iOS 10 😍 pic.twitter.com/YBO32tzex4
— Karissa Bell (@karissabe) June 13, 2016
The change was quiet: it wasn’t announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday.
Rather, right before the keynote, Apple slipped Mail, Stocks, Compass, Calculator, Watch, Weather and others into the iTunes App Store as downloadable apps.
When iOS 10 rolls out later this year, users will no longer be forced to use the vast majority of Apple’s stock apps.
Apple says that if you get the beta, you can start removing apps you never use right away.
Here’s a full list of what you can delete now or in a future beta release, along with some of the minor glitches you can expect, given that, as Apple notes, “removing built-in apps from your Home screen can affect other system functionalities.”
- Calculator
- Calendar
- Compass
- Contacts: If you remove Contacts, you won’t lose your contact information. You can still find all of that information in the Phone app.
- FaceTime
- Find My Friends
- Home
- iBooks
- iCloud Drive
- iTunes Store
- Maps
- Music: If you remove the Music app, it won’t be available to use with CarPlay.
- News: Not removable yet, but that’s coming in a later version of iOS 10 beta.
- Notes
- Podcasts
- Reminders
- Stocks
- Tips
- Videos
- Voice Memos
- Watch app: If you try to remove the Watch app from an iPhone that’s paired with an Apple Watch, an alert asks you to unpair your Apple Watch before you can remove the app.
- Weather
To delete an app, just touch and hold its icon until it dances. Tap the “X” to delete the app, then tap Remove. Hit the Home button to finish.
According to Mashable, these are the apps that iOS users are still stuck with:
Still stuck with these guys though pic.twitter.com/SoDwuqszj9
— Karissa Bell (@karissabe) June 13, 2016
If you come to regret deleting a particular app, no problem: reinstalling is as simple as going to the App Store, finding the app and downloading it again.
Image of iPhone home screen courtesy of Denys Prykhodov / Shutterstock.com
MrGutts
So after everyone removes the bloat, they will have a pure MacOS!! Yay for you Apple users!
SizzleBizzle
This is great news. It’s the pet hate of my first iPhone.
Mahhn
hopefully this will force google/And-Roid to let us do the same. Which would reduce the desire to root them just to get rid of the spyware/adware. Making it less of a pain in the arse (roid)….
Larry
Well, it’s not quite that bad on Android. A new phone appears to come with Google Games, Google Books, Google News, Google Sports etc., but they are really just tiny stubs. The first time you open one of these, the real app is downloaded and installed.
To get rid of one of these huge apps, go to Settings–Apps and select Remove Updates and only the stub will remain. You don’t have to have the apps, just the mandatory links.
Micah Henning
Might I recommend using the term “default apps” or something like it instead of “stock apps” in the article title and body? At first I thought you meant, literally, the Stocks app, and nothing else. :)
Andrew
According to Apple’s Craig Federighi (on The Talk Show Live) ‘deleting’ these stock apps will remove the icon on the home screen and any user data for that app, but the binaries for the app will remain as they are part of the OS. It also seems that because they are part of the OS you won’t be able to update them independently from the OS.