New In iOS 10: You Can Delete Stock Apple Apps, Download Them At Will From App Store

In the midst of all of the Apple WWDC madness and excitement you can be forgiven for getting caught up in all of the major announcements and missing some of the smaller changes that Tim Cook and team didn’t touch on for one reason or another. As the keynote was happening, and as a slew of Apple’s executive team were introducing and demoing key new features within iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS, the company engineers were secretly uploading a number of apps to the App Store against Apple’s own developer account.

Curiously, all of those apps are ones that generally come pre-installed as stock apps on iOS out of the box.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist with a first class honours degree in rocket science studies to work out what’s going on here. The fact that a number of pre-installed apps are now hosted on Apple’s App Store page is interesting enough. But it’s the fact that the App Store actually recognizes that they are installed on a device that really puts the icing on the cake.

As part of the run up to WWDC and the iOS 10 speculation, we had heard a little rumor suggesting that users would eventually be able to delete stock Apple apps from the device. We just didn’t know how that implementation would work. We know how it works on.

The list of pre-installed apps available on the App Store includes:

1. Stocks
2. Weather
3. Maps
4. Notes
5. Mail
6. Music
7. Watch
8. iTunes Store
9. Voice Memos
10. FaceTime
11. Calendar
12. Videos
13. Tips
14. Calculator
15. Compass
16. Contacts

Early access to the iOS 10 beta 1 has also confirmed that device owners will be able to delete some of the pre-installed apps from the device, such as Mail, Weather and Compass, as can be seen in the screenshot from iOS 10 below.

Screenshot credit: Jorge

They will then be able to be downloaded again from the App Store at the user’s discretion should they see fit. This is particularly useful for those people who get a new iPhone and iPad, create a folder called “Apple”, “Junk”, or something similar, and then simply relegate the stock apps that they don’t use to that folder never to be seen again.

The self-contained nature of the apps will also more than likely mean that Apple will have the ability to update individual apps as and when it deems it necessary rather than having to push out a full iOS update if a change to an app is needed.

iOS 10 will land this coming fall alongside the iPhone 7. A developer preview is available to download right now.