What happened to arranging iPhone apps in iTunes

The Apple Support Communities thread asking how to organize apps with iTunes after the change has 2,578 “me too” votes and 148 replies, the highest count in our research, and a second thread on the same question has 774. On Ask Different, the top answer to a 2011 question about a fast way to organize iPhone apps still points to the iTunes Apps tab; that page has been viewed 32,815 times.

What the iTunes Apps tab used to do

Up to iTunes 12.6, plugging in an iPhone and opening the Apps tab showed a picture of the home screen. You could drag icons between pages, drop one app on another to make a folder, and see every page as a thumbnail down the side. The changes went to the phone the next time you synced.

That is why so many old answers, guides and forum replies still say “just use iTunes”. Those answers were right for years, and they are the reason people keep searching for the feature.

What changed, and what Finder does today

iTunes 12.7 removed the App Store and the Apps tab from iTunes. From then on, apps could only be installed and arranged on the device itself.

Since macOS Catalina, the Mac no longer uses iTunes for iPhones at all. You select the iPhone in the Finder sidebar instead. That window handles software updates, backups, restores and syncing music, films, books and photos, and its Files tab lets you copy documents to and from apps that share files. There is no view of the home screen and no way to move icons.

Some people kept iTunes 12.6.5, a version Apple offered for a while for business use. It does not run on current macOS versions and was never updated for current iOS versions, so it is not a way forward.

What replaces it on a Mac in 2026

• iPhone Mirroring: shows the phone in a window and lets you edit the home screen with the pointer. Free, but still one page at a time. See our iPhone Mirroring guide for what it is like in practice.
• Apple Configurator: Apple's tool for schools and companies, with a Home Screen Layout editor that is meant for supervised devices.
• TidyGrid: a Mac app that reads the home screen over a cable and puts every page side by side on the phone's real grid, much like the old Apps tab, then writes the new layout back when you press Apply.

Getting the iTunes-style view back with TidyGrid

1. Connect the iPhone to the Mac with a cable and tap Trust on the phone if it asks.
2. Open TidyGrid. It reads the Dock, every page, folders and widgets, with the real icons, and lists the apps that are only in the App Library.
3. Drag apps between pages, or use Arrange to put every app in order by color or A to Z in one click. Nothing changes on the phone yet.
4. Press Apply. TidyGrid saves a backup of the layout the phone has now, writes the new one, then reads it back to check that it matches.

Who this works for

• TidyGrid needs a Mac with Apple silicon and a cable between the device and the Mac.
• Reading a layout is tested on iPadOS 15, iOS 16, iOS 17 and iOS 27.
• Applying a layout is tested on iPadOS 15.3.1 and iOS 27.2. iOS 16, iOS 17, iOS 18 and iOS 26 are still in testing, and on those TidyGrid opens the layout read-only and says why.
• TidyGrid is planned for early December 2026. Until then there is a waitlist.

What it cannot do

• Finder cannot show or change the home screen. That will not change by updating macOS.
• TidyGrid does not install apps from the Mac the way iTunes once could. It only moves apps that are already on the phone.
• TidyGrid does not run on Windows or on Intel Macs, and it does not work over Wi-Fi.
• TidyGrid cannot see empty spaces you left between icons on purpose, so they are not kept when you apply.

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