How to delete apps in iOS 13 and iPadOS 13

Posted:
in General Discussion edited October 2020
With the new iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, Apple has again changed how you delete, or rearrange, apps on your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. It's simple enough when you know, but you're not going to find it by accident.

Apple has subtly changed how you delete apps on iOS 13.
Apple has subtly changed how you delete apps on iOS 13.


Usually the way it goes with new iOS updates is that you've heard months of hype, yet when it lands on your device, you initially can't see much of a difference. Then as you work away, you keep finding new touches or sometimes new apps, and the next thing you know, you would abhor the idea of going back to last year's ancient-looking iOS. Except now.

While all of this will happen to you with iOS 13, you're also going to very quickly hit a snag the very first time you go to delete or move an app. You'll press and hold on an app, but instead of all the apps starting to wiggle, you'll get a popup menu instead.

This is the result of Apple adding a Haptic Touch menu to all apps. It's very handy and will become more and more so as developers exploit it for their apps, but in the meantime, it gets in the way.

Here's what to do

Things actually haven't changed all that much, they just seem to have done. So now, the quickest steps to delete an app are these:

  • Press and hold on any app

  • Keep holding as the Haptic Touch menu appears

  • Keep holding until that menu disappears

All of the apps start their wiggling dance, not just the one you were pressing on. You can slide any of them anywhere, you can drag any of them atop any other to create folders.

Not that we would ever do this in real life, but let's pretend we want to delete OmniFocus. Left: Press on the app. Middle: Keep pressing even when this menu appears. Right: When the menu is gone, all apps start wiggling just as they used to.
Not that we would ever do this in real life, but let's pretend we want to delete OmniFocus. Left: Press on the app. Middle: Keep pressing even when this menu appears. Right: When the menu is gone, all apps start wiggling just as they used to.


And for most of them, you get a black X in a gray circle at top left of the icon. If you get that, you can tap it and delete the app.

If you don't, it's an Apple app that's required for iOS to work and you can't delete it. You can move it, though, so countless iOS users before you have created an Apple Apps folder for this very purpose.

When you're finished, you have a choice. You can tap the Done button that has appeared at the top right of your screen.

Or you can simply swipe up or down. Swiping up with the action you take to go back to the home screen, takes you back to the home screen and all the apps stop wiggling. Swipe down for Control Center or Notification Center, then when you go back, the apps have stopped their dance.

There is another way

Instead of this pressing, holding, and waiting for the menu, you can instead just do this:

  • Press and hold on any app

  • Let go when the Haptic Touch menu appears

While we can expect to see more developers adding features to the Haptic Touch menu on their app, every single one already comes with two options. One is Share, which lets you send a link for that app to anyone you like. And one is Rearrange Apps.

Every app now has this in their Haptic Touch menu, the option to Rearrange Apps -- which also means delete.
Every app now has this in their Haptic Touch menu, the option to Rearrange Apps -- which also means delete.


Tap on that, and all the apps on your device start their wiggle.

It is still distracting when you go to delete an app using the press-and-hold that you've been doing for years, only to not only see a potentially quite elaborate Haptic Touch menu appear, but also to feel the vibration of your device.

Yet Haptic Touch is the replacement for what was previously called 3D Touch and no one knew it was there. Certainly app developers, who knew about it, also knew that it wasn't available on all devices.

So they didn't put any effort into creating 3D Touch menus, and users had no compelling reason to put any effort into using them.

Haptic Touch brings all of 3D Touch's benefits to every device running iOS 13, and maybe we will adopt it much more -- specifically because Apple makes us go through it to delete or rearrange apps.



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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    DeathDeath Posts: 7unconfirmed, member
    This makes dragging apps for multitasking a huge pain in iPads. I don't know how long should I press to drag the apps for multitasking. I can't get it right most of the time. Either it shows the contextual 3D Touch menu or it starts to jiggle for rearranging/deleting. It is really frustrating. So much for Apple's intuitive interface. Does anyone else encounter this issue or is it just me?
    netroxforgot username
  • Reply 2 of 15
    Some of the Insurance Companies do a good job with contextual menus. Tap and hold the app and besides the standard options, the option to call roadside assistance or display your ID card.
    forgot usernamelolliver
  • Reply 3 of 15
    I would argue that the "other way" listed in this article is the preferred/expected way.  Press and hold then select "rearrange apps."  Anyone who knew the "old way" should have no trouble finding this option.  One could argue that this is actually a better, more intuitive approach than the original, since it explains to people why their icons have started to wiggle/dance.
    folk fountainmobirdsuperklotonlolliver
  • Reply 4 of 15
    I would argue that the "other way" listed in this article is the preferred/expected way.  Press and hold then select "rearrange apps."  Anyone who knew the "old way" should have no trouble finding this option.  One could argue that this is actually a better, more intuitive approach than the original, since it explains to people why their icons have started to wiggle/dance.
    Not sure, though, how most people will think that "rearrange apps" means "delete app".  That is not at all intuitive, and relies more on poking around hoping to discover how to delete an app.

    Personally, I prefer the old way.  Hold until jiggle, press the "x" to delete, or move it with your finger.  
    superklotondamn_its_hotleehammtannertannertanner
  • Reply 5 of 15
    I'm waiting for the time I can use brainwaves to use my iPad which has become an Inception OS.
  • Reply 6 of 15
    Question regarding Haptic Settings

    What iPhone are you using?
    What setting do you use?
    What 3D Touch Sensitivity setting do you use? It seems that the options are fixed to either Light, Medium, or Firm. You can not fine tune or make any other custom choice.
    Settings>>Accessibility>>Physical And Motor>>Touch>>3D And Haptic Touch>>3D Touch Sensitivity.

    Also, what do you use with Touch Selection?
    Fast or Slow?

    Thanks
  • Reply 7 of 15
    You can still delete apps the old fashioned way.  Just need to lightly hold your finger on the app icon for a little longer and it will start to wiggle as usual...
    forgot username
  • Reply 8 of 15
    netroxnetrox Posts: 1,415member
    Death said:
    This makes dragging apps for multitasking a huge pain in iPads. I don't know how long should I press to drag the apps for multitasking. I can't get it right most of the time. Either it shows the contextual 3D Touch menu or it starts to jiggle for rearranging/deleting. It is really frustrating. So much for Apple's intuitive interface. Does anyone else encounter this issue or is it just me?
    No, I sent that complaint as feedback. Also, the problem is that when you "slide" the touch to select an option in context menu and I accidently slide off the menu and it literally drags the icon along and starts to wiggle. It's a horrible UI. Once the context menu appears, it should stay in its place and not be "dragged" if the gesutre went too far from the intended target.
    forgot username
  • Reply 9 of 15
    Been hoping for a way to automatically sort Apps into folders or pages, by kind, for ages!  Why hasn’t Apple done this?  I assume developers don’t have enough access to do this as 3rd party app. Jailbreak was/is only way to do something like this.
  • Reply 10 of 15
    Oh, boy. What are the UI experts at Apple doing now? Sounds like a dreadful compromise.
    elijahg
  • Reply 11 of 15
    Appreciate the heads up about this. 
  • Reply 12 of 15
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    I sent Apple feedback about this, it’s a really crap UI design. I thought it was broken in the early beta I downloaded but it stuck. The extra long hold resulting in two different UI actions is really a horrible kludge and feels half baked. 

    The context menus are pretty much useless imo anyway as by the time you’ve used them (especially with the long press on non-3D touch devices) you may as well have opened the app and accessed that feature directly. Also it requires you to have the memory of an elephant. I can’t remember what apps have context menus and what ones don’t, and I’m not going to poke every app I have and try to remember feature x is available through a context menu. It’s just not going to happen. 

    3D Touch was barely utilised because most (all?) of its advantages were invisible and you had to be told about them to find them out. And that telling only occurred if you dove deep  into the iOS help pages at Apple.com, rather than iOS saying “you can 3D Touch this and do that!” So no one used it, and now it’s gone. 
    edited September 2019
  • Reply 13 of 15
    macguimacgui Posts: 2,350member
    drutkiew said:
    You can still delete apps the old fashioned way.  Just need to lightly hold your finger on the app icon for a little longer and it will start to wiggle as usual...
    Yeah, the menu pops up but don't stop believing. It goes away and you get the Icon Dance. What Apple didn't  do, is improve arranging them. It's still a mess, just now underneath a new mess. Trying to sort them is like that old sliding numbers game in that little plastic holder combined with a sort of Whack-a-Mole.
  • Reply 14 of 15
    I just press and drag the icon, it will automatically turns into 'wiggle' state. Found it by accident but I think it's the quickest way to do, you don't have to wait for the icons to wiggle. It will wiggle if you try to drag the icon that you want to move or delete.
  • Reply 15 of 15
    Hi,
    i recently upgraded to ios13 with my setting disable deleting apps while on ios 12, now i cannot delete apps in ios13

    any walk around solution?

    ty
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