It seems like the most interesting ways to customize the iPhone’s home screen are possible thanks to bugs and glitches (besides jailbreaking, of course). A new bug allows us to hide home screen text labels on iPhone and iPad devices running iOS 10.
The good news is, this trick doesn’t require a jailbroken device – it just needs to run iOS 10. As it usually happens with these bugs, the effect remains only until you restart the device.
How to hide home screen text labels on iPhone or iPad
The first thing we need to do is make sure the icon labels remain hidden even after locking and unlocking the phone. Go to Settings -> Accessibility and in the Increase Contrast section, enable the “Reduce Transparency” option.
Then, go back one level and in the Reduce Motion submenu enable the “Reduce Motion” option.
Now comes the tricky part. On the home screen, swipe up from the bottom to bring up the Control Center. Keep it open, but lift your finger off the screen.
Then, swipe up the Control Center menu but keep your finger on the screen. As you’re still holding the Control Center interface at the top of the screen, use another finger to double-click the home button and quickly lift your finger off the Control Center.This is easiest to do with the phone laying on a table or another flat surface so you can use both hands.
Since timing is critical in this situation, perhaps the easiest to do it, is with the phone laying on a table or another flat surface so you can use both hands.
Don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first time, it might take a few tries to get there. The most important thing to remember is you need to let go of the screen as soon as you finish double-clicking the home button.
Of course, double-clicking the home button opens the app switcher interface, so click on the home button once again to exit it. If you did things properly, your home screen dock icons won’t have text labels anymore.
According to user feedback, it seems like the trick doesn’t work if you have more than two pages of home screen icons. You can fix the problem quickly by grouping some apps into folders.
As you probably noticed already, only the dock icons have the text labels hidden. To hide the labels for the rest of your home screen icons, you simply need to transfer the existing text-free dock icons to the home screen, then drag four new icons to the dock which will hide their text labels as well. Then rinse and repeat until all your home screen icons don’t have text labels.
While it’s easy to hide home screen text labels on iPhone or iPad the effect disappears once you restart the device. The icon names also reappear if you disable the “Reduce Motion” or “Reduce Transparency” options, as well as if you change your home screen’s wallpaper.
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