iPad Tutorial – How to Arrange Apps, Create Folders & Clean Up iPad Screens


A few posts back, I wrote about arranging apps on your iPad. Here’s more on managing apps and creating app folders for your iPad, taken from the 2nd edition of my guide to the iPad.

Arranging Apps in iTunes
Need to really clean up your screens? Connect the iPad to your computer with the USB cable. After iTunes loads, select the Apps tab from the row of tabs across the top of the screen.

You can then rearrange a single screen or drag and drop between screens as much as you like. Want to quickly place an app from the app list pane on a particular screen? Select the screen number you want on the right, then uncheck and recheck the app from the app list pane on the left (in the checkbox). Double-clicking the app in the app list takes you directly to the screen where that app appears.

You can also organize apps by creating folders while you’re in iTunes. Drag and drop one app on top of another. In iTunes you can also select multiple apps before creating the folder. Select the first app you want to put in a folder. Use command-click (Mac) or control-click (Windows) to select additional apps for the collection. Then drag the entire pile of apps onto the last app you want in the folder. I suggest you do most of your app organization in iTunes while the iPad is connected to your computer. You can put up to 20 apps in a folder for a total of 4,406 apps. If you need more apps than that you have a bigger problem than app organization. Get help.

By the way, the view of these app screens can change from portrait (above) to landscape (below). It all depends on the orientation of your iPad when you connected the sync cable and syncing began.


About Andy Brovey

Dr. Andy Brovey, The Portable Prof, teaches about digital tools through his work, websites and social media. In 2007, Apple Inc. recognized his work and named him an Apple Distinguished Educator. He started this iPad Academy website shortly after the first iPad went on sale. On his Freelance Teaching site you'll find the resources you need to teach like a smart entrepreneur.

3 thoughts on “iPad Tutorial – How to Arrange Apps, Create Folders & Clean Up iPad Screens

  • flash gordon md

    aside from using itunes, is there a way to locate which folder you’ve used to stash an app? i’ve got a couple of hundred apps, and my folders include “accessories,” “productivity” and “utilities” (among others).

    at times, i want to “promote” an app to the landing bar at the bottom of the screen, but don’t recall where i stashed it. it’s easy to search for the app by name, but that doesn’t give me a clue which folder it’s in, or let me move it to the landing bar (which probably has a better name).

    any thoughts?

    • Andy Brovey Post author

      I’m not aware of a way to do this on the iPad itself, though I tried. You’ve made a great suggestion for how the search feature on the iPad should be improved to accomplish this task. Agree it would be great to be able to quickly locate an app then move it to the dock or elsewhere on the iPad. For now we’ll need to use iTunes as a guide to app location.

Comments are closed.