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The feeling of existing in a messy space can create a sense of uneasiness. Clutter is not just restricted to the physical space around you, it can even impact your iPhone. Here are a few tricks that can help you quickly clear out the mess.
1Reorganize Your Home Screen
A major source of clutter on your iPhone is your home screen. We often forget to organize apps and delete the ones we no longer use. I find that getting some sense of organization on my home screen removes a lot of noise.
There aremany ways to organizeyour home screen. You can arrange apps by usage, which makes navigation easier when you reach for your favorite apps. Creating folders to organize apps by categories like social media, travel, finance, and health is also something that works for me since this cuts down the number of pages on your home screen.
If you are rearranging multiple apps across your home screen pages, you may stack apps and move them simultaneously. To do this, long-press on an app. Once it starts to shake, hold down on the app with one finger, and tap other apps with another.
You can try and change the look of your home screen bychanging the display mode and app icon size. To do this, press down on a part of your home screen and tap “Edit” in the upper left corner. Now, click “Customize.”
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From here, you can change the size of app icons to large for a cleaner look, and set dark, tinted, or automatic display modes, depending on what gives the best organized feel for you.
3Disable App Home Screens
One way to quickly organize your iPhone home screen is to hide entire home screen pages. You could use this app to hide a page of apps that you don’t use and often see but still want to keep on your phone.
To disable app home screens, press down on your home screen and tap “Edit.”
Click “Edit Pages” and tick off the home screen page you want to hide. You will also get a “-” (minus) symbol on a page once you hide it, which you’re able to click if you want to delete the page and its apps entirely.
4Remove Apps From the Home Screen
The final step in organizing apps on your iPhone home screen is removing them without permanently deleting them. This hides them from the home screen, but still retains them in your app library.
To remove an app from your home screen, long-press your screen and tap the “-” (minus) symbol on the app. Then tap “Remove from Home Screen.”
While I have been lazy and hesitant in the past to remove apps entirely from my home screen, I have found that this is one of the most effective ways to let go of apps that take up unnecessary space and create clutter.
Finally, deleting apps you no longer or seldom use can helpsave some iPhone storage, clear up space for newer apps you have wanted to try out and help you take stock of which apps are actually necessary for your daily usage.
5Use a Minimalist Wallpaper
Aside from app organization, a simple way to eliminate the clutter from your home screen is to use a simple, minimalist wallpaper instead of a noisy and crowded one. Not only is a minimalist wallpaper easy on the eyes, but it also gives you some leeway to create more “cluttered” pages with app folders or stick to a home screen with a bigger library of apps without creating a messy look.
To combat clutter, I tend to use a sleek, quiet home screen wallpaper, and a bolder lock screen wallpaper. You can change this by long-pressing the lock screen to bring up the home screen gallery, or heading to Settings > Wallpaper.
6Cut Out Noisy Widgets
There are plenty ofnative and third-party appsthat offer fun widgets that help you quickly access features and app information from the comfort of your home screen. But sometimes, widgets can overcrowd your home screen pages. You might also have widgets that you hardly use, which simply takes away from your apps.
To remove a widget from your home screen, long-press the widget and tap “Remove Widget.”
You can alwaysadd new widgetsand see what looks best for your home screen. To add a widget, long-press a part of your home screen, click on “Edit,” and tap “Add Widget” to browse.Stacking widgets can be a great way to save spaceand not show too much information at once.
7Clean Up Your Control Center
As of iOS 18, theControl Centeris a highly customizable part of your phone. You canadd native and third-party apps, shortcuts, smart home controls, and more—all of which can create clutter.
To edit your Control Center, swipe down from the top-right corner of your iPhone and tap the “+” button on the top-left corner. Tap the “-” (minus) sign to delete icons or click “Add Control” to add what you need.
Instead of scrolling through your Control Center, you can add importantshortcuts to your lock screenand anything else you want to quickly access.
8Delete Duplicate Contacts
A cluttered contact list is an inefficient contact list. A quick way to declutter this app and make it easy to search for contacts is to take some time and delete or merge duplicate contacts. To do this, tap on the “Duplicates found” notification that pops up in the “Contacts” tab and tap “View Contacts.” You can merge duplicate contacts by tapping “Merge All.”
You can also update your “Favorites” tab and clear your voicemail box to get rid of unnecessary clutter.
9Sort Your Photo Library
A major problem that I face when I open my Photos app is how overwhelming it can be to find the pictures I’m looking for among duplicate photos or unnecessary pictures.iOS 18’s Photos redesign can help, but it’s not a perfect solution.
Batch deleting pictures you no longer need, creating organized albums beyond what’s available to you, and customizing your collections are good starting points. You can also use the “Customize and Reorder” option (available at the very end of your photo library) to rearrange or hide collections to tone down the clutter.
10Manage Your Notifications
Cutting through the noise of notifications can be difficult, especially if you are trying to focus on getting your productivity on.
You canmanage notificationsby going to Settings > Notifications, selecting an app you don’t want notifications from, and toggling off “Allow Notifications.” You can also control the type of alerts you get from each app, or turn off “Time-Sensitive Notifications” to prevent non-priority notifications from staying on your lock screen.
Another way to tune out the noise without disallowing notifications is byturning on Focusto silence notifications for a scheduled session. you may turn on Focus mode from Settings > Focus, where you can add, customize, sync, and schedule focus sessions. Adding Focus to your Control Center can help you start a session quickly, or you cantrigger it by automation.
