How to Set Up a Minimalist iPhone Home Screen

Why your home screen changes how much you use your phone

Every time you unlock your iPhone, the first thing you see is the home screen. If Instagram, TikTok or YouTube sit there with a red badge, it’s easy to open them even though you picked up the phone to check the time or set an alarm. Avoiding that doesn’t take willpower. It only takes keeping them out of sight.

The idea isn’t new. In 2013, Jake Knapp, a designer who worked at Google, described stripping his iPhone of social media, email and the browser, keeping only the useful parts (music, camera, maps, weather). He later built on it with John Zeratsky in the book Make Time. His takeaway was simple: when reopening something takes a bit of effort, you only do it when you actually need it, not out of boredom.

There’s some research behind that “friction.” In a 2023 study in PNAS, an app that added a few seconds of pause before opening social media led people, over the weeks, to try to open those apps less often. A minimalist home screen isn’t the same thing, but it works on the same principle: it breaks the automatic shortcut between unlocking and scrolling.

Step 1: decide which apps earn a spot on page one

Before changing anything, sort your apps into two groups:

• Tools: apps you open with a goal and close when you’re done. Phone, Messages, Camera, Maps, Calendar, Notes, your bank, your transit app.
• Scroll apps: the ones you open “for a second” and stay in. Social media, short video, YouTube, sometimes email or news. If you’re not sure which, check your report in Settings › Screen Time: the ones eating the most time usually are.

Only tools go on your first page and in the dock (the bottom row). Four apps in the dock and a handful more on the first page is usually plenty. You don’t need to delete anything: everything else lives in the App Library, the last page on the right, sorted by category and searchable.

Step 2: remove apps from the home screen without deleting them

One app at a time

1. Touch and hold the app icon.
2. Tap Remove App.
3. Choose Remove from Home Screen (not “Delete App,” which uninstalls it).

The app stays installed, with your data and login, and you can find it in the App Library or by swiping down on the home screen to search.

Whole pages at once

If you have several pages full of icons, hiding them is faster than emptying them one by one:

1. Touch and hold an empty spot on the home screen until the icons jiggle.
2. Tap the page dots above the dock (or Edit › Edit Pages, depending on your iOS version).
3. Uncheck the pages you want to hide and tap Done.

Apps on those pages stay in the App Library and in search. If you ever miss them, check the page again and it comes back exactly as it was.

Step 3: stop new apps from cluttering it again

A clean home screen doesn’t last if every app you download lands on it. To prevent that:

1. Open Settings › Home Screen & App Library (just “Home Screen” on older versions).
2. Under newly downloaded apps, choose App Library Only.
3. In the same section, leave notification badges in the App Library turned off.

Badges (the red number on an icon) are another hook: they tell you something is waiting even when it isn’t urgent. You can turn them off app by app in Settings › Notifications. It’s all covered in how to turn off notifications on iPhone.

Step 4: icons without color or labels

Since iOS 18 you can change the look of every icon at once. Touch and hold an empty spot, tap Edit at the top, then Customize. From there you can:

• Pick large icons, which drop the name under each app. With only a few apps, the screen looks far calmer.
• Use a dark or single-color tinted style. The option names shift between iOS 18, 26 and 27, but they all do the same job: stop logos from competing for your attention with their brand colors.

A plain or dark wallpaper finishes the look. To go further, you can turn the whole phone gray: see how to make your iPhone grayscale, including how to turn it on only in scroll apps.

Step 5: add friction to your scroll apps

With those apps out of sight, the next step is making them take one more gesture to open. Three options, from gentle to firm:

• Open them only through search. Swipe down on the home screen and type the name. Having to type “insta” is exactly the pause that lets you decide whether you really meant to go in.
• Require Face ID. Touch and hold the icon and tap Require Face ID (or Touch ID). The app stays where it is, but every time you open it, your iPhone asks for your face or passcode.
• Hide them. With Hide and Require Face ID, the app disappears from the home screen, search and the App Library, and moves to a “Hidden” folder at the bottom of the App Library that only opens with Face ID. To undo it, touch and hold the icon inside that folder and tap Don’t Require Face ID.

Apple designed these options for privacy, not screen time, so they don’t set any limit: they only add a step. If you want an app to lock after a certain amount of time, that’s a Screen Time job, covered in how to set app limits on iPhone.

Step 6: a different home screen for work, study or sleep

Focus modes can show a different home screen page while they’re on. That way you can have one page with just what you need for work and an even emptier one for the evening:

1. Build a page with the apps for that moment (say, Mail, Calendar and Notes for work) and, if you don’t want to see it the rest of the day, hide it as in step 2.
2. Go to Settings › Focus and pick the Focus (or create one with +).
3. Under Customize Screens, tap the home screen and select the page you want to see with that Focus.
4. Add a schedule so it turns on by itself.

While the Focus is on, unlocking shows only that page. If you’re a student, how to stop getting distracted by your phone while studying walks through a full “Study” Focus.

A minimalist iPhone setup, for example

To give you an idea, here’s a setup that works for a lot of people:

• Dock: Phone, Messages, Camera and Maps.
• First page: the Calendar widget on top and, below it, Notes, Clock, Music, your transit app and your bank. Large icons, no labels, dark style.
• Other pages: hidden.
• Scroll apps: off the home screen, behind Face ID, opened only through search.
• Sleep Focus at night: a page with just Clock and Music.

It doesn’t have to look like this on day one. Start by removing the two apps where you lose the most time and hiding the pages you never use; tweak the rest as you go.

How to keep it clean

• Review it once a week. If an app has crept back onto page one “just for a moment,” send it back to the App Library.
• Check your Screen Time report. If a tool is turning into a scroll app (email and news often do), move it to the other group. How to check your screen time explains which numbers to look at.
• Don’t beat yourself up when you open something. The goal isn’t to never use those apps, it’s for opening them to be a choice instead of a reflex.