Some of the apps that are shipped on your iPhone or iPad are great. I wouldn't for the life of me want to replace the default Mail or Notes applications. Nevertheless, the truth is that you don't use all of those default iOS applications - whether you've already found a Calendar alternative, or aren't interested in using your camera entirely.

The default iOS applications don't take up too much space in your device's memory. However, they do take up a lot of screen real estate. Since you aren't normally able to uninstall these default applications, they are always present on your likely already-crowded home screen.

If your iPhone or iPad has been jailbroken, you don't have to put up with those default applications. Instead, you can choose to hide them from your home screen, or even delete them entirely. This way, you can reduce the clutter on your screen, and maybe even make room for other great iPhone or iPad applications.

Poof

Poof is a very minimalist and simple iOS app that does exactly what its name implies - it hides some applications from your home screen. Although the app is technically only available for the iPhone, it works on the iPad just the same.

hide apps

To hide an icon, open Poof and turn off the applications you don't want to appear on your home screen. Poof is able to hide all of your applications, the default applications as well as your regular apps. You can even hide Poof itself! If you want access to one of those hidden apps later on, you can unhide them from Poof, or use your iOS device's search (which will even turn up a hidden application).

It's possible some icons will not yet be hidden when you head back out of Poof to your home screen. If that's the case, just respring or restart (by holding the power button) your device.

Springtomize ($ 2.99)

Another application you can use to hide select applications is Springtomize. This Cydia app will cost you  just under three bucks, but it's a much more professional and full-featured application than Poof. We won't provide a full review in the space of this article, but suffice to say that Springtomize is able to customise many more aspects of your iOS device's user interface.

hide apps

Springtomize will appear in your Settings application, under Extensions in the left sidebar. Go to Springtomize -> Icons and scroll down to the Hide Icons subsetting. The top two buttons allow you to hide Newsstand and Springtomize itself. Other applications can be hidden by enabling the Hide Icons feature and choosing one or more applications from within Springtomize.

When you're done, you may still have to respring or restart your device for the changes to take effect. Luckily, there's an incredibly easy way to respring your device from within Spingtomize itself. Just go to Springtomize's main window and tap the Reload button in the top right corner of your screen.

SSH

The above two applications allow you to hide (system) applications from your iPhone or iPad home screen. As these apps don't take up too much rooms on your internal memory, that often suffices. If you really want to delete these apps altogether, you can do so by configuring SSH and connecting to your iOS device over FTP. However, doing so is not advised. You'll be facing a system restore if you want one of those applications back (say, when you have to take your device to the Apple store), or can even damage the integrity of your device by deleting the wrong files.

What applications do you want to hide on your iPhone or iPad, and why? Let us know in the comments section below the article!