Apple may soon let you hide your apps

The ability to hide these native apps has been a long time coming, with Apple chief Tim Cook alluding the change in September last year. Photo / iStock

If you are an iPhone user, chances are you have found the inability to remove those pesky iOS stock apps to be quite the annoyance.

You know the ones we are talking about - Game Centre, Apple Watch, Health, Stocks and a number of others.

While it is always possible to create a folder in order to store those apps, it's hardly as rewarding as hiding them from your iPhone forever.

Well, now it appears Apple is finally making the later possible.

After examining iTunes metadata - where all the vital information about apps is stored - AppAdvice noticed every app now includes two new codes "isFirstParty" and "isFirstPartyHideableApp."

Currently, all of the codes are set to "false", but once set to "true" users will be able to remove that app from their home screens.

The ability to hide these native apps has been a long time coming, with Apple chief executive Tim Cook alluding the change in September last year.

"It's not that we want to suck up your real estate; we're not motivated to do that. We want you to be happy. So I recognise that some people want to do this, and it's something we're looking at," he told Buzzfeed.

According to Mr Cook, the reason this has taken so long is the fact it's a very complex process.

"There are some apps that are linked to something else on the iPhone. If they were to be removed they might cause issues elsewhere on the phone. There are other apps that aren't like that. So over time, I think with the ones that aren't like that, we'll figure out a way [to remove them]."