It can be extremely confusing if your favourite application icon suddenly goes missing from the home screen of your Android phone. Not only can it be confusing, but it can be pretty frustrating too.

So, why do apps tend to disappear from the homepage of an Android phone? Well, there are various causes that may prevent the app from appearing on your homepage.

Here’s a few ways you can get a missing back onto the home screen layout on an Android phone.

Check if the missing apps are installed

The first thing that you’ll want to do when searching for a missing app is to check whether it’s even installed on your device.

In many cases, users find that the app is no longer installed on their device. This means that if the application wasn’t installed, then there won’t be an icon in your home.

You can check this by going into your installed apps directory which is located in the App Gallery – this is where all apps and the other app versions are stored.

If the apps are downloaded onto your device, then you’ll be able to open the App Gallery on the home screen.

Reset the Home Screen Data and Launcher

Some devices may give you the ability to reset their home screen layout.

In other words, you have the option of resetting the homepage so where the apps would appear naturally.

You can do this by;

First, click into your Settings.
Then, click into Apps (or Application Manager)
Next, click on Storage and then Manage Space.
Finally, you should be able to Reset your home screen layout or clear Launcher data to reset the home screen pages.

This should take your applications back to their default position, which will enable you to find all of the apps installed on your device.

Check if the missing apps are stored in the folder app

There may be times where your apps have been accidentally been stored within folders on your Android phone.

This is more likely if you’re trying to download and use apps that aren’t in the Google Play Store. If you’re downloading from third party stores, the file may be stored within a Folder app on your device.

And if you have the app in a Folder, you won’t be able to select the app icon on your home screen.

Though, you should be able to find missing apps in your folders easily by simply searching for them in your Android folders.

Check if missing apps are hidden

Some Android models allow for a hiding or freezing option of applications, though as a feature this is getting rarer and rarer.

Once an application is hidden, it disappears from the homepage of your Android phone – this is usually done from within the Settings of your device.

Most people will now use an app hider to do this, as more modern Android phones don’t have this functionality in their app permissions.

Reset your Android device to factory settings

In some cases, if none of the above options have worked, you can decide to perform a factory reset on your device.

Before initiating a factory reset, it is recommended to backup data of your Android phone – obviously this will restore your device back to factory settings.

When your factory resets a phone, your data and cache are completely cleared. This will give you the chance to download the app from fresh, where it should work as normal.

Conclusion

In conclusion, an unexpected change or an Android updates could cause the removal of an app from your home screen layout.

Fortunately, once you check your device thoroughly, you should be able to restore missing apps to your home page without much issue.

Many Android users have reported that the installed applications didn’t show up on the home screen layout, though usually this is because the app has been removed or hidden.