How to Move Multiple Apps on iOS

Tuesday January 22, 2019 4:11 PM PST by Juli Clover
For those of you who like to rearrange the Home screen on your iPhone and iPad to organize your apps, you might be interested to know that there's a handy little hidden feature for moving multiple apps at one time.

With this option, you can move multiple apps from your Home screen to another screen or into a folder, making organization a breeze.

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Here's how to do it:
  1. Press and hold to make all of your apps wiggle, like you'd do to move or delete an app.
  2. With a finger, drag the first app that you want to move away from its initial position.
  3. With a second finger, tap the additional app icons that you want to add to your stack, while keeping the first finger on the first app.
That's all there is to it! Each app that you've tapped will be stacked up with the first app that you dragged. You can assign the entire stack to a folder, or drag it over to a new Home screen page.

If that list of instructions sounds a bit confusing, just check out our video above for a hands-on walkthrough of the steps.

29 comments

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JoshBoy
13 months ago
Omg why was this not on their keynote. I have spent soooooooo long moving apps one by one.
Rating: 8 Votes
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keysofanxiety
13 months ago

How does everyone organise their Apps? I just like to have one screen so I have all my daily apps in alphabetical order and the one folder called “occasional apps” for all the other stuff


I have mine organised by atomic weight.
Rating: 7 Votes
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martyjmclean
13 months ago

Very Cool, will save time :)

Moving your apps through iTunes would save even more... oh wait. :rolleyes:
Rating: 7 Votes
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Unity451
13 months ago
A tip so good it needed a dedicated post!
Rating: 5 Votes
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Lioness~
13 months ago
Very Cool, will save time :)
Rating: 5 Votes
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atomic.flip
13 months ago
My God! How have I never stumbled across this???

As much as I’ve laughed about many of these supposedly obvious how-to articles I must admit I stand completely corrected on their value.

Well done!
Rating: 4 Votes
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now i see it
13 months ago
Looking forward to the day we can escape icon grid misery
Rating: 3 Votes
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arn
13 months ago

I don’t think works with all devices. Just tried on iPad Air 2. No dice.

I think iOS 11 or later.
Rating: 2 Votes
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Lacasse
13 months ago
I don’t think works with all devices. Just tried on iPad Air 2. No dice.
Rating: 1 Votes
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C DM
13 months ago

Apple needs to introduce some sort of auto ordering of apps, here are some suggestions:


* Alphabetical order
* App category stacks, similar to MacOS stacks

If you reset your home screen layout that will organize the apps alphabetically, if I recall correctly.
Rating: 1 Votes
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