The iPhone came with a few apps that I never use. I don’t use the stocks or the iTunes apps. The Obsessive Compulsive in me was demanding that I remove these icons from the menu. This walkthrough is a quick step by step on how you can hide menu icons of unused programs.
This will only work for jailbroken phones.
1. Install BossPrefs. This is a app that can be found in the utility section of Cydia.
2. Open the BossPrefs app.
3. Tap on the Hide Icons button on the bottom of the BossPrefs screen.
4. Scroll down the list to find the icon you would like to hide. Tap the ON switch to turn it to off in order to hide an icon for the app.
This does not remove the app from your phone, it merely hides the icon. This is very useful for apps that you cannot remove such as the apps that come installed on the phone from the factory.
You can save yourself a step if you download Poof! directly from Cydia. It’ll have it’s own icon in the launcher so you can skip starting Bossprefs, but it may just end up adding an icon that you almost never use and defeat the purpose.
Yeah, just use Poof… Bossprefs has been replaced with SBSettings anyways
I chose BossPrefs instead of just Poof! because I like a multi-functioning tool versus a single function tool.
As for SBSettings, I am not too wild about more of my memory being taken up as I occasionally crash programs because I run out of memory. But as we are showing you how to do things, I will install SBSettings and use it for another How To very soon. That way people can learn both apps and chose for themselves. Sorry for not mentioning the SBSetting option in the post, I just like my good old standby.
I hid a number of icons. After an iPone firmware upgrade and a re-install of BOSS Prefs I now no longer am able to “unhide” my icons from before.
Does anyone know how to resolve this?
Thanks
waht happens if i now hide the app itself taht is BossPref?
Is there any way we can hide icons without having a jailbroken iphone?
hi i hid all my jailbroken icons and the poof n now how do i get it back
Or…..you can just whack them on your last icons screen so you don’t have to look at them. Then you don’t need a jail broken iPhone. That’s what I did.
I decided to try and hide all the apps on my springboard to see what it would do, It goes the spinning circle of death and now won’t boot. So be carefull
Thomas
i hid icons and cant get them back, i dont even remember how i hid them? heeelp?
I hid all of my app icons, and the only thing I have on my phone is google (on the springboard). How can I unhide all of these with out out re jailbreaking or restoring.
Help..I have tons of things on my phone and no back up.
in answer to everyone that has managed to delete icons off their main screen including poof/bossprefs and want them back:
you have to just re-download either poof / bossprefs off of the installer icon and then open it and unhide all your icons,
if you’ve deleted the installer icon too then there isn’t too much you can do without resetting your whole phone,
just make sure you sync it to your mac first and then it’s not really a prob is it ?
xo
If you hid all your apps including Poof/Bossprefs, syncing to iTunes won’t help since iTunes doesn’t backup your jailbreak apps. If you have SSH installed (and if your phone is jailbroken you really should) you can SSH in as Root and type two lines:
apt-get remove com.bigboss.bossprefs
apt-get install com.bigboss.bossprefs
or
apt-get remove com.bigboss.poof
apt-get install com.bigboss.poof
to delete and then reinstall these packages. That should fix your problem.No need to reset your phone!
And there is a simple alternative to get back your bossprefs and go from there:
Get any program to access the iPod/iPhone file system, like DiskAid, freely available from http://www.digidna.net/diskaid, and find the item.plist file in the application/bosspref directory. There you just need to delete the entry about “hidden”. (Helps if you can read XML
)
So every poofer install SSH first
Some really usefull information here if you pay attention, thanks
I have the same problem as Luther.
I hid several apps with BossPrefs and then upgraded to OS 3.0 and now can’t unhide them.
Do i just have to wait until the next jailbreak is out and then follow the above instructions or is there another way because i was hoping to avoid having to jailbreak it again.
thanks.
yeah I have the same issue, I hid multiple apps in folders via categories and then upgraded to 3.0 yesterday and lost them all, I restored my iphone and everything but even the apps that came with the phone (camera, settings, etc.) are still gone!
really surprised nobody pointed this out before:
Poof uses app restrictions to hide icons. If you hide poof or bossprefs and want them back:
Settings > General > Restrictions > Enable Restrictions (enter a password twice) > Disable Restrictions (enter password).
All icons will be back.
Ajax, THANK YOU!!! That worked! My icons are back!!
I have another question, I upgraded to 3.0 and can’t find poof on Cydia… any advice?
THANK YOU! After hours of trying to install “poof!” via ssh … this is a lot easier!
I tried that and my icons still arent returning? Any suggestions?
What a bunch of poof!
I use Poof and then enable it for the dock icons in SBSettings so the icon isnt readily available. Also you can poof Poof and use the search to launch it.