Home screen answers.
The questions people ask most about arranging iPhone and iPad apps, answered plainly. Each page starts with the answer, says what Apple's own tools can do, and says what they cannot.
Arrange from your Mac
- How to arrange iPhone apps from a Windows PCYou cannot arrange iPhone apps from a Windows PC with any Apple software: iTunes for Windows lost the Apps tab in 2017, and the Apple Devices app that now handles iPhones on Windows has no home screen editor.
- Can you edit the App Library from a computer?No app on a computer can change the App Library's own categories, because iOS builds them automatically and Apple gives no way to pick which apps go in which group, on the phone or anywhere else.
- Can you rearrange iPhone apps with iPhone Mirroring on your Mac?Yes: iPhone Mirroring shows your iPhone in a window on your Mac, and clicking and holding on the home screen puts it into edit mode, so you can drag apps and folders with the pointer.
- What happened to arranging iPhone apps in iTunesApple removed the Apps tab from iTunes in version 12.7 in September 2017, and the Finder window that replaced iTunes for iPhones on the Mac has never had a home screen editor.
- How to organize iPhone apps into folders from your MacApple has no Mac app that lets you build iPhone folders with a big screen and a mouse since iTunes dropped its Apps tab, so on Apple's own tools you make folders on the phone, by dropping one app on another.
- How to rearrange iPhone apps from your Mac (without iTunes)Apple has no Mac app that shows your iPhone home screen and lets you drag apps around it the way iTunes did before version 12.7 in 2017.
Alphabetical order and moving many apps
- How to move apps from the App Library to the home screenTo put an App Library app back on your home screen, touch and hold its icon in the App Library and tap Add to Home Screen, or drag it out onto a page; iOS only does this one app at a time.
- How to move multiple apps at once on iPhoneYes, iPhone can move several apps at once: in jiggle mode, start dragging one app, then tap other apps with a second finger and they gather into a stack you can drop on another page or into a folder.
- How to move a whole home screen page on iPhoneYou can move a whole page on iPhone: in jiggle mode, tap the row of dots above the Dock to see every page as a thumbnail, then drag a thumbnail to a new position.
- How to organize hundreds of iPhone appsWith hundreds of apps, the fix is to stop placing them one at a time: decide which apps really need a home screen spot, send the rest to the App Library, and close the gaps so each page is full.
- How to put iPad apps in alphabetical orderiPad has no setting to put home screen apps in alphabetical order; Reset Home Screen Layout gets you part of the way, but it removes your folders and keeps Apple's apps first.
- How to put iPhone apps in alphabetical orderiOS has no setting that puts your home screen apps in alphabetical order and keeps everything else; the only built-in way is Reset Home Screen Layout, which also removes every folder you made and puts Apple's own apps first.
Undo, backups and restoring
- Why are my iPhone apps moving around by themselves?Apps rarely move for no reason: in the threads where a cause was found, it was a setting that hides and later restores apps, an app being removed from the home screen but kept in the App Library, or a widget or new app pushing icons along.
- Can I restore my home screen layout without erasing my iPhone?Not from an iCloud or Finder backup: Apple restores a backup as a whole, so getting yesterday's layout back from it means replacing everything on the phone with yesterday's copy.
- How to save your home screen layout before changing itiOS has no way to save just the home screen layout and switch back to it later: a device backup does include the layout, but it can only be restored together with everything else on the phone.
- I reset my home screen layout, how do I get it back?There is no undo for Reset Home Screen Layout: once it runs, your folders are gone and your apps are back in Apple's default order, and the old arrangement is only kept inside a device backup made before the reset.
- I accidentally dragged a widget to my home screen and my layout is destroyedRemoving the widget does not undo the damage, because the apps it pushed out of the way stay where they landed, often spread over the following pages.
Apple Configurator
- An alternative to Apple Configurator for arranging iPhone appsApple has no other Mac tool for arranging a home screen; besides Configurator, your choices are the device itself (jiggle mode, the two-finger stack and the page editor), iPhone Mirroring on a Mac, or a Mac app made for this job such as TidyGrid.
- Apple Configurator error “Couldn't communicate with a helper application” when rearranging apps“Couldn't communicate with a helper application” (NSCocoaErrorDomain 0x1001) means Configurator lost contact with a background process it uses to talk to the device, and the forum threads about it during home screen editing end without a confirmed fix.
- Apple Configurator does not save home screen changes to iPhone or iPadApple Configurator's Home Screen Layout is meant for devices that a school or company manages, and on an ordinary personal iPhone or iPad people report that the changes simply do not stick.
- Apple Configurator removes widgets from my home screenApple Configurator's home screen editor has no place for widgets, and people who applied a layout with it report that every widget disappeared and apps they had kept only in the App Library came back onto the home screen.
iPad and two devices
- Can I rearrange my iPad apps from my Mac?Yes, in a few ways: Universal Control lets you drag iPad icons with your Mac's trackpad, Apple Configurator has a Home Screen Layout editor, and TidyGrid shows every iPad page side by side on the Mac and writes the result back.
- Why do my iPad apps rearrange after a restart?Nobody in the threads has found a confirmed cause or a setting that stops it: people report iPad icons reshuffling after a restart, often together with widgets they had removed coming back and pushing apps out of place.
- How do I lock my iPad home screen layout so it stays the same?You cannot: iPadOS has no setting that locks the home screen so apps stay put until you allow changes, and that is true on iPhone too.
- Can I have the same app layout on my iPhone and iPad?No, Apple does not sync the home screen layout between an iPhone and an iPad, and an exact copy is not possible anyway because the two have different grids, Docks and widget sizes.
New iPhone
- Home screen layout not restored from backupMost of the time the layout is coming back but the apps have not finished downloading, because a restore brings back where each app goes first and then downloads the apps from the App Store one by one.
- How to keep your home screen layout on a new iPhoneYes, a new iPhone keeps the same apps on the same pages if you set it up from your old one, either with Quick Start or by restoring an iCloud or Mac backup, because the home screen layout is part of what moves across.
- How to set up a new iPhone without the old home screen layoutQuick Start and backup restore have no option to transfer everything except the home screen layout, so if you use them, your old pages, folders and widgets come across too.
AI agents
- Can AI change my iPhone home screen? What an agent can and cannot doAn AI agent connected to TidyGrid cannot change your iPhone by itself: it can only propose a new layout in a draft on your Mac, and the phone changes only when you press Apply.
- How to organize your iPhone home screen with AIiOS has no setting that lets an AI assistant rearrange your home screen, but an AI agent on your Mac can plan the layout for you through TidyGrid's built-in MCP server, which gives it your pages, apps and icon colours.