How to Delete Apps on Your iPhone: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide!

Your iPhone is crammed with apps you’ll never open again, and your storage space is filling up alarmingly fast. Sound familiar? Fortunately, deleting apps on your iPhone isn’t a complicated task, but not everyone knows that there are several ways to do it, each with slightly different results. In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to get rid of unnecessary apps and free up space right away for the things that really matter.

In this blog, we’ll cover:

1. How do you quickly delete a single app from your iPhone?
2. What’s the difference between deleting an app and offloading it?
3. How do you delete apps through Settings?
4. How do you delete multiple apps at once?
5. Can you delete built-in Apple apps?
6. What should you do if deleting an app doesn’t free up enough storage space?

How do you quickly delete a single app from your iPhone?

To delete a standalone app, press and hold its icon on your Home screen until a menu appears, then tap “Delete App” and then “Delete.” This works on any iPhone running iOS 13 or later and takes literally two seconds. All associated data will be deleted immediately, so make sure to save any progress or files first if you still need them.

You can also tap the icon briefly instead of pressing and holding it: this will make the apps “wiggle,” and a small X will appear in the upper-left corner. Tap that cross and confirm that you want to delete the app. Many people find this method more familiar because it’s worked this way for years, ever since the very first iPhone models.

What’s the difference between deleting an app and offloading it?

Deleting an app completely removes the app and all its data from your iPhone, while offloading (temporarily “unloading” an app) only removes the app itself but keeps your documents and settings. As soon as you reinstall the app, everything will be exactly as you left it. Offloading is therefore ideal if you’re not sure whether you’ll need an app later on.

You can tell if an app has been uninstalled by the small cloud icon next to it on your Home screen. If you tap it, iOS will automatically reinstall the app, provided you have an internet connection. This is especially handy for apps you only use a few times a year, such as a tax app or a vacation app.

How do you delete apps through Settings?

In your settings, you can see at a glance exactly how much storage space each app is using, which helps you decide more carefully what to delete. Go to Settings, tap General, and then tap iPhone Storage. You’ll now see a list of all your apps, sorted from largest to smallest by storage usage.

Tap an app in that list, and you’ll see two options: “Uninstall App” or “Clear App Cache.” This overview is the best place to start if you want to clean up your device regularly, because you can immediately see which apps are taking up the most space. Often, these aren’t the apps you’d expect: a photo-editing app or a game can easily accumulate several gigabytes of cache.

• Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
• See which apps are using the most space.
• Tap an app to see details, such as the size of the app itself versus the stored data.
• Select “Delete App” to remove everything, or “Offload App” to keep the data.
• Repeat this for every app you no longer use.

How do you delete multiple apps at once?

Apple doesn’t provide a direct button to delete ten apps at once, but you can speed up the process significantly by grouping the apps first. Group unnecessary apps into a folder on your Home screen by dragging them on top of each other, and then delete them one by one from that folder. This is faster than switching back and forth between different Home screens.

Another approach is to enable the automatic feature that offloads apps you haven’t used in a while. Go to Settings, tap App Store, and turn on “Offload Apps.” Your iPhone will then automatically clear out unused apps as soon as your storage space gets low, without losing any data.

Can you delete built-in Apple apps?

You can simply delete most pre-installed Apple apps, such as Compass, Mail, Maps, or Stocks, in the same way you would delete third-party apps. A small number of system apps, such as Settings and Phone, cannot be deleted because your iPhone relies on them to function. If you accidentally delete a built-in app, you can simply download it again for free from the App Store.

If you’re unsure whether an app is important for your system, just leave it installed: it rarely takes up more than a few hundred megabytes, and the risk of losing something important isn’t worth the small space savings.

What should you do if deleting apps doesn’t free up enough storage space?

If you delete a bunch of apps and your storage is still tight, the problem is often photos, videos, or old backups rather than apps. In Settings > General > iPhone Storage, check the “Photos” and “System Data” categories: for many users, these take up more space than all the apps combined. You can often delete photos that are already in the cloud locally without losing anything.

If your iPhone remains slow despite a thorough cleanup, or if your storage management is faltering, the cause may run deeper than just a full phone. An aging battery that no longer works efficiently, or a damaged screen that slows down touch response, can cause just as much of a slow experience as insufficient storage space. At An iPhone screen repair At ThePhoneLab, we always use original parts, and thanks to the Lowest Price Guarantee on iPhone Screens You’ll never pay too much for it. Our specialist, Wouter, who has been repairing phones since 2016, often sees people considering buying a new iPhone when a repair would make the phone work just as smoothly as before.

Our own repair data shows that screen repairs accounted for about 59 percent of our repairs over the past year, followed by battery replacements at 18 percent. A new battery is often all it takes to make an iPhone that “feels slow” run like new again, without having to consider buying a new device. Check out the options at thephonelab.nl/prices before you buy something new.

About ThePhoneLab

For over ten years, ThePhoneLab has been repairing phones, tablets, and laptops every day throughout the Netherlands. Every repair starts with an honest diagnosis—no cure, no pay—and then you choose what works best for you: original parts or a more affordable alternative from our own brand, for every budget. Because repairing is almost always smarter than replacing—for your wallet and for the planet. It’s no surprise that customers give us a 9.5 rating in tens of thousands of reviews.

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