How to Uninstall an iOS App You Can’t Find on the Home Screen

There’s an app you want to uninstall, but you can’t find it on your Home screen. If the icon appears to have disappeared, how are you supposed to uninstall the app? Don’t panic. There is another way.

But after updating to the iOS 10 Beta, I was having problems with an app that would not update. The App Store kept displaying a badge on its icon indicating there was an app to be updated, but that app would never update. All other apps were updating just fine. I figured I would uninstall the problem app and then reinstall it, hoping that would fix the problem. I searched through my Home screen including every folder and through the additional screens and folders as well. I could not find the app anywhere. So, how do I uninstall an app I can’t find?

I called Apple Support about my problem because the badge wouldn’t go away and it was driving me mad. First, they had me try various things to get the app to update. If you’re having a similar problem, you can try these solutions:

• Force quit the App Store app by double-pressing the Home button and then swiping up on the App Store app. Then, I reopened the App Store app, but the app still wouldn’t update.
• Use Spotlight Search to try to find the app on your main Home screen and the other Home screen pages. In my case, Spotlight Search didn’t find the app.
• Use Power+Home to perform a hard reset of your phone. This is not a factory reset, it’s a reboot, like restarting your computer. This didn’t work for me either.
• Uninstall the app through iTunes. To do this, plug in your iOS device and click the device icon below the menu bar. Then, click Apps under Settings and search for the app you want to uninstall in the Apps list on the right. Click Remove to delete the app. Click OK on the confirmation dialog box, and then click Apply at the bottom of the window to apply the change to your device. Your device will sync with iTunes and the app will be deleted from the device.

Unfortunately, iTunes won’t currently recognize my iPhone since I updated to iOS 10 Beta, so that option was out too.

I thought I would have to resort to doing a factory reset of my phone, and I really didn’t want to do that. However, the Apple Support specialist then led me through a simple procedure that took me into the Settings to delete the app.

This procedure is useful even if you’re not having trouble with an app. If you have tons of apps installed, like I do, it may be difficult sometimes to remember where you put an app on the home screen. But from the Settings, you can get a list of all your apps so you can uninstall them one-by-one.

To begin, tap Settings on the Home screen.

On the Settings screen, tab General.

Tap Storage & iCloud Usage on the General screen.

On the Storage & iCloud Usage screen, tap Manage Storage in the Storage section.

All the apps installed on your device are listed in order of the app size. If you have a long list of apps, it might take a while to find the one you’re looking for. Scroll through the list to find the app and tap on it when you find it.

On the Info screen for the app, tap Delete App.

Tap Delete App on the popup dialog box.