How To: Easily Remove (some) Apple App Icons

I see and hear complaints all the time of people wanting to remove pre-installed applications from Apple off of their iPhone or iPod Touch.  Everybody knows by now that to remove an app installed from the App Store simply touch and hold the app icon until all the icons jiggle.  Once the icons start to jiggle the non-Apple apps will have a black “X” badge in the corner of them.  Touch there to remove that app from your device.  But what if you want an Apple app removed?  There is no black “X” badge that appears for Apple apps, so that doesn’t work.

With the introduction of iPhone OS 3.0 Apple added Parental Controls called “Restrictions.”  Using the Restrictions function you can block access to all sorts of content on the device – including a few applications.  While not a surefire way to remove all of the Apple icons from the springboard, you can use Restrictions to block access (ie: remove) to a few of the Apple installed applications such as Safari, YouTube, Camera, iTunes and App Store.  You’re still stuck with the other Apple apps such as Notes, Calendar, Weather, Stocks, Mail, etc.  But for these few applications turning them off and hiding their icons is easy.

To use Restrictions to hide the icons of these apps you must first enable it in the Settings app. Navigate to Settings, select Restrictions,  enable Restrictions, and enter a passcode.  Now you can easily turn off the apps that you don’t want showing up anymore.  That’s it! You’re done!