Not every app deserves a spot in your app drawer. Maybe there are some built-in apps you don’t use, or a few you don’t want others to see. Here’s how to hide apps from your app drawer with Nova Launcher.
How to Hide Apps In Nova Launcher
If you already have Nova Launcher installed and set up, hiding apps in the drawer is incredibly simple. Note that you’ll need Nova Launcher Prime ($4.99) for this feature. This will only hide apps in the drawer, so you can still put the app on your home screen before hiding it in the drawer and quickly launch it from there if you want.
First, jump into Nova’s settings menu, by either long-pressing on the home screen and selecting the “Settings” icon in the bottom right, or heading into the app drawer and tapping the “Nova Settings” icon.
From there, tap the second entry in the menu—”App & widget drawers.”
There are several options here, but you’re going to want to scroll all the way to the bottom. In the “Drawer groups” section, select the “Hide apps” option.
Then, select all the apps that you’d like to hide by ticking the check box next to the app’s name.
Once you’ve finished selecting all the apps you’d like to hide, either back out of this menu with the arrow in the upper left, or just hit the home button to go back to the home screen.
You’re done—all the selected apps will no longer be visible in the app drawer.
How to Access Apps Once They’re Hidden
If you don’t have the app icon on any of you home screens, then you’re probably wondering what to do if you need to access it. You could jump back into the above menu and unhide the app, but that’s cumbersome. Fortunately, there are a couple of ways to launch an app once it’s been hidden.
Access a Hidden App from the Search Bar
If you’re using the Android Marshmallow-style app drawer in Nova, pulling down while in the drawer will launch the search bar and “Recently install or updated” app menu. Even though the app icon isn’t shown in the drawer, you can search for the app and launch it that way. Easy peasy.
Access All Your Hidden Apps at Once
If you’d prefer a way to show all your hidden apps, there’s also a quick and painless way to do that—but you’ll need to enable Nova’s tabbed app drawer interface first.
To do this, jump back into Nova’s Settings menu, then tap the “App & widget drawers” option again.
Scroll about three-quarters of the way down the menu, till you see the “Tab bar” section. Enable the Tab bar by sliding the toggle to the right. It turns orange when it’s activated; gray when it’s not.
You can also change the Tab Style here using the entry just below the Tab Bar option—the default should be “Colorblock,” but I generally opt to swap that to “Material,” just because it looks cleaner and more minimal.
Once the Tab Bar has been enabled, you can exit this menu and head back to the home screen.
Back in the app drawer, you’ll notice a new feature at the top: a tab that should read “Apps.” If you long-press this tab, a small menu will appear with two options: “Show hidden apps” and “edit.”
Toggle the “Show hidden apps” option to instantly make your hidden apps visible. A small asterisk will appear next to the word “Apps” to denote that hidden apps are currently being shown.
Repeat the same process to hide your apps again, this time unticking the check box.
It’s worth mentioning that this shouldn’t be used as a method of security. There are still very simple ways to access hidden apps (not limited to the methods mentioned here), so this isn’t really a proper solution to keeping private data safe. But it’s a great way to reduce clutter or hide icons you don’t want to see.
If you’d prefer a way to show all your hidden apps, there’s also a quick and painless way to do that—but you’ll need to enable Nova’s tabbed app drawer interface first.
To do this, jump back into Nova’s Settings menu, then tap the “App & widget drawers” option again.
Scroll about three-quarters of the way down the menu, till you see the “Tab bar” section. Enable the Tab bar by sliding the toggle to the right. It turns orange when it’s activated; gray when it’s not.
You can also change the Tab Style here using the entry just below the Tab Bar option—the default should be “Colorblock,” but I generally opt to swap that to “Material,” just because it looks cleaner and more minimal.
Once the Tab Bar has been enabled, you can exit this menu and head back to the home screen.
Back in the app drawer, you’ll notice a new feature at the top: a tab that should read “Apps.” If you long-press this tab, a small menu will appear with two options: “Show hidden apps” and “edit.”
Toggle the “Show hidden apps” option to instantly make your hidden apps visible. A small asterisk will appear next to the word “Apps” to denote that hidden apps are currently being shown.
Repeat the same process to hide your apps again, this time unticking the check box.
It’s worth mentioning that this shouldn’t be used as a method of security. There are still very simple ways to access hidden apps (not limited to the methods mentioned here), so this isn’t really a proper solution to keeping private data safe. But it’s a great way to reduce clutter or hide icons you don’t want to see.