How To Hide Newsstand & Other Stock iOS App Icons Without Jailbreak

For a while now, users have been complaining that Apple has keeps increasing the amount of useless apps in iOS with each new update. There is quite a valid argument that as apps like Stocks are targeted at a very narrow range of audience, Apple should allow users to delete them at will. Unfortunately, that is not the case for now, and unless you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPad, you will have to learn to live with these excess icons. This issue was further aggravated when Newsstand was announced with iOS 5, and people learnt that its icon cannot be hidden away in a folder. The jailbreak community was quick to come up with a boatload of tweaks to counter this problem, and some desktop-oriented solutions have appeared for non-jailbroken devices as well. With so much focus on Newsstand, you might have forgotten that your SpringBoard has a few other barely-used tenants. It’s a good thing that the developers behind Rag3Hack took note of the issue. Thanks to this web-based hack, it is now possible to hide any iOS system app icon without jailbreak. What’s even better is that, as the hack works completely through Safari, you don’t have to connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer.

The web app only hides apps temporarily. All icons will be back in their original places after you restart your device. This could be considered a drawback as well, but using Rag3Hack is so easy, you won’t find it taxing to repeat the following steps after a reboot.

Instrcutions

1. Open Safari and navigate to the following address:
   https://rag3hack.no-ip.org/
2. On the Rag3Hack homepage, tap the Hide Apps without Jailbreak button.
3. The Hide Apps menu lists every system app that comes with iOS 5 or iOS 6. Find the app you want to remove and tap its name.
4. You will be asked to install a new certificate; confirm your choice.
5. The installation will fail to complete, and an error message will be displayed. Hit Done to dismiss it.
6. Now, long-press any icon to enter jiggle mode. You will notice that the targeted app’s icon has gone blank, and the word Hide has been added to its name. You can hide the icon by hitting the delete button in the top-left corner.

Rag3Hack caters equally well to the needs of iOS 5 and iOS 6 users, with both YouTube and Passbook present in its list. As mentioned earlier, this hack keeps icons hidden only till the next reboot, but unless you have to reboot your device quite often, this should not be much of an issue.

[via iDownloadBlog]

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Hamza Khalid

Handles Windows Phone, iOS and Cydia. A big WP7 fan, who just loves writing about anything and everything. Google+

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