6 Best Minimal iPhone Setup in 2025 – [iOS 18.5 Updated]

Mobile companies provide memory expansion up to 1TB, but it can lead to a messy phone. Now, Apple iPhones also have up to 1TB of built-in storage, which can also become disorganized if not managed. Remove unnecessary files and applications to keep your iPhone organized.

In this part of the tutorial, I will guide you on how to keep your iPhone neat and organized by managing your apps and settings. Despite having numerous apps and photos, we tend to use only a handful of them on a daily basis. Therefore, I will provide you with a few tips on how to keep your iPhone minimal and clutter-free.

Keep Your iPhone Neat and Organized: The Best Minimal Setup

Tip #1. Re-Organize the Applications

The applications are the only reason, why our iPhone gets messy and cluttered up. Personally, I’ve more than 100 applications on my iPhone, so you can assume how occupied the home screen will be and also how difficult to locate the app unless I use the Spotlight search to open the app.

Finding the application isn’t the matter since you can easily get it from the spotlight search, but arranging them according to the user makes the difference and helps you clean the iPhone home screen. Though it will take a few minutes, it’s worth it.

Unlock your iPhone, analyze the applications that are frequently used, used once a week, and used once a month. Or you could rectify them according to the categories, like Social Apps, Music Apps, Photos App, Finance Apps, Banking Apps, etc., and move all the applications into a folder as per the usage or category.

Tip #2. Hide Dock on iOS

A pro tip for the iOS 16 or later users, if you don’t like the Dock, then change the wallpaper to the somewhat dark, doing this will hide the dock from the home screen, and give a clear view. You can download the wallpaper from here (For Lockscreen) and here (For Homescreen). I’d recommend choosing the black kind of wallpaper because it really helps to hide the iPhone dock.

After changing the home screen and lockscreen wallpaper, enable the System-Wide Dark Mode on your iPhone.

Tip #3. Create Separate Cards for Applications

Another tip to use and access the application on iPhone efficiently is to create a new screen by category or how frequently do you use the phone. Like all Social Applications, Messaging Apps, Mail Apps, Photos Apps, should be kept in front, it makes it easy to find and open the applications that we use in our routine life.

It’s up to you, how smartly you bifurcate the applications and arrange them on the screen, without disturbing daily habits of using and accessing the applications, while clearing up the iPhone.

Tip #4. Disable Notifications if Not Needed

Do you know what’s the first action you’ve always taken after downloading the app on the iPhone? Allowing or Disallowing Notifications. Upon launching the app for the first time, when the pop-up appears asking to send the notifications, we always choose Allow. Later, we realize all those apps occupy the notification bar, with toxic and useless notifications.

This is the next step to keep iPhone minimal, from the Settings app, you can control the notifications.

1. Open the Settings App.
2. Tap Notifications.
3. Examine the applications and disable the notifications for the applications that you barely need.

Tip #5. Choose between the Sounds, Badges, and Alerts

Alerts: When you enable Alerts, the app will show notifications on the Lock Screen, Notification Centre, and Banners, whichever you choose. It is like a Push Notification that will notify you actively. You could use Alerts most likely with the Phone App, Messages App, WhatsApp, etc.

Sounds: Whenever there is any notification, the iPhone will play Sound, it is mostly recommended for the Phone app, so you never miss any call.

Badges: Badges show the notification counts on the particular application, it is suitable for messaging applications.

Aside from this, if you really manage the notifications, your iPhone’s battery life will increase gradually, because unnecessary notifications won’t make sound or lighten up the iPhone’s screen on every notification.

Tip #6. Customize Control Center and Widget Screen

Like the home screen, the Control Center needs to be clean, for minimal iPhone design in 2021, the Control Center is always the first choice to enable and use applications and functions of iPhone like AirDrop, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Screen Recorder, Dark Mode, etc.

The Control Center secretly gives access to applications and functions, and Apple lets you as much as shortcuts in Control Center. However, adding more apps to the Control Center could be of no use, instead, you should only keep the shortcuts that are used in the routine.

1. Go to the Settings App.
2. Tap Control Center.
3. Select Customize Controls.
4. Now it’s your turn to add and remove the Control Center.