Those iOS apps you don’t use — you know, the ones you’ve tucked away in a folder on your third or fourth home screen — may soon be completely out of the way, according to some iTunes metadata.
First spotted by AppAdvice, Apple seems to have added some keys for ‘isFirstParty’ and ‘isFirstPartyHideableApp’ with boolean values of true or false.
The non nerdspeak version: some ‘first party’ apps like Stocks may soon become hidden at your discretion. It doesn’t mean you can delete them.
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We currently see this in reverse with iCloud Drive, which lets you choose to add a dedicated app to your homescreen.
This won’t apply to every app, though. Hiding some apps may cause a functionality breakdown elsewhere; hiding iTunes away could affect Apple Music, for instance.
On the flipside, that pesky Stocks app (sorry to keep picking on it, but I even made a clever joke about it in the headline, so I guess it’s just not for me) has no bearing elsewhere in iOS, so it could vanish without issue.
It’s not clear when we may see this functionality come forward, but WWDC is a good bet — especially if Apple launches a new beta for iOS at the event. Until then, we’re left creating junk-drawer folders.
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