How To Disable Add App Icon To Home Screen For New Apps In Android

There is an extremely visible and functional difference in the way Android and iOS works. In Android, you have an App Drawer where each and every app installed on your phone shows up. You can add shortcuts to your most used apps to your home screen. Android users are somewhat enthusiastic about modding the look of their home screens. Most users go for a perfect, organized look with just the most essential apps on the home screen. Android tends to add app icon to the home screen whenever a new app is installed which can make your home screen unorganized. The good news is, you can decide to turn off the add app icon to home screen feature for new apps.

Disable Add App Icon To Home Screen

Go to your home screen tap and hold on it. You will enter editing mode. Tap the gear icon at the very bottom of your screen to go to the home screen settings. Scroll to the bottom of the settings screen.

You will see a section called ‘Home Screen’. Under this particular section, turn off the ‘Add icon to Home Screen’ shortcut. Anytime you download and install a new app, the app’s icon will never again be added to the home screen automatically.

If you need to add the icon of a recently installed app to your home screen, open the app drawer. Tap and hold an app and drag it towards the very top of your screen. You will automatically switch to the home screen. Now, release the icon and it will be added to the home screen.

Settings May Vary

Fragmentation is an issue with Android and there isn’t much that should be possible about it. The above settings show up in Android on a Nexus 6P. It’s possible that these settings are somewhere else on your device, or that they aren’t available by any means. You may need to dig around a bit to discover it since it isn’t possible to list where the setting is for all devices. One place to search for this specific setting is in the Google Play Store app’s settings. If you have a specific launcher installed on your device, check its settings also.

Hard-to-find settings is an unfortunate issue with all Android device and it that is not just a result of fragmentation. With each new version of Android, Google frequently moves settings around or reorganizes them. This specific issue isn’t just limited to Android alone. Apple also does something very similar to iOS. The outcome is the same in the two cases; users need to hunt for settings they were otherwise able to access easily previously. The procedure for accomplishing something simple may vary based on your OS version and the device itself.