How to put iPhone apps in alphabetical order

This is the most asked ordering question we found: 21 threads on Apple Support Communities and MacRumors, with 900 and 860 “me too” votes on the two biggest ones.

What Reset Home Screen Layout actually does

In Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset, the option Reset Home Screen Layout puts the apps that came with your iPhone back where they were on day one. Apps you downloaded follow after them in alphabetical order.

That is why it gets suggested in almost every thread, and why so many replies regret it. Any folders you created are removed, so a phone with 10 tidy folders comes back as several pages of loose icons. Apple's own apps are not mixed into the A to Z order, so Calendar and Weather sit on page 1 while your App Store downloads start after them. And the next app you install lands wherever there is space, not in its alphabetical place.

• Good for: a phone with few folders where you just want a clean start.
• Not good for: anyone who spent time building folders, or who wants Apple's apps mixed in with the rest.

Doing it by hand on the iPhone

This keeps your folders, but every app you drop pushes the others along, and on a phone with a few hundred apps it takes a long evening. If you want to keep some apps in folders, decide that first, because a folder sits in the order by its own name, not by the apps inside it.

1. Swipe left past your last page to open the App Library, then tap the search field at the top. You now see every installed app as one alphabetical list. Take screenshots of it to use as your reference.
2. Touch and hold an empty part of the home screen until the icons jiggle.
3. Start dragging the first app, then tap the next few apps in the list with another finger. They stack under your finger, and you can drop the whole stack on the page where it belongs.
4. Work through the list one screenful at a time, then tap Done.

Putting apps in alphabetical order with TidyGrid

A to Z leaves the Dock alone, keeps widgets at the top of the page they were on, and flows icons around them. Folders keep their contents and move as one item. The apps inside each folder are not put in order, so open the folder in TidyGrid and drag them if you want those A to Z too.

1. Connect your iPhone to your Mac with a cable and tap Trust on the phone if asked.
2. Open TidyGrid. It reads every page, folder, widget and the Dock, with real icons.
3. Click Arrange and choose A to Z. Every app and folder on your pages is put in order by name, gaps between apps close, and pages are added or dropped as needed.
4. Look through the draft. Drag anything you want to keep in a special spot, or press Undo. Nothing has changed on the phone yet.
5. Press Apply. TidyGrid saves a backup of the current layout first, then writes the new one and reads it back to check it matches.

Who this works for

• TidyGrid needs a Mac with Apple silicon and a cable to the iPhone.
• 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.

What it cannot do

• Neither iOS nor TidyGrid keeps the order for you after the fact: a newly installed app goes where iOS puts it, so you run A to Z again later.
• TidyGrid does not put the apps inside folders in order.
• TidyGrid cannot see empty spaces you left between icons on purpose, so those are not kept.
• TidyGrid cannot read pages you have hidden. Unhide them first.

Questions