Can you rearrange iPhone apps with iPhone Mirroring on your Mac?

An Apple Support Communities thread asked how to move iPhone apps into folders from a Mac by drag and drop (4 “me too” votes, 6 replies). The only working answer given there was iPhone Mirroring. We found almost no one asking about iPhone Mirroring for this directly, which is why we tried it ourselves.

What you need

• A Mac with macOS Sequoia 15 or later, with Apple silicon or an Apple T2 Security Chip.
• An iPhone with iOS 18 or later and a passcode set.
• Both signed in to the same Apple Account with two-factor authentication, with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on.
• The iPhone locked and near the Mac. It can be charging.
• Apple says iPhone Mirroring is currently unavailable in the European Union.

How to rearrange apps in the mirroring window

1. Open iPhone Mirroring on the Mac. Leave the iPhone locked and nearby.
2. Click and hold an empty spot on the home screen, or an app, until the icons start to jiggle.
3. Drag an app with the pointer. Drop it on another app to make a folder, or hold it at the edge of the window to move to the next page.
4. Click Done in the top corner of the mirrored screen when you are finished.

What it is like for a big reorganization

The mirroring window is the iPhone screen at about phone size, and it behaves exactly like the phone. You see one page at a time. Dropping an app pushes the others along and can spill the last icon onto the next page. Dragging across several pages means hovering at the edge and waiting for each page to turn.

Apple's way of picking up several apps at once needs a second finger to tap the extra apps while the first one is held. A pointer gives you only one point of contact, so in practice you move apps one by one. For ten moves this is fine. For a hundred apps across eight pages it is the same slow job as on the phone, just with a mouse.

When a side-by-side view helps more

TidyGrid takes a different approach. It reads the layout over a cable and shows every page next to each other on the phone's real grid, with the Dock and folders. You can select several apps with Command-click or a selection box and drag them together, park apps on a Shelf while you decide where they go, or use Arrange to put everything in order by color or A to Z. Nothing reaches the phone until you press Apply, and the layout it read is backed up first.

The two can be used together: plan and apply the big change in TidyGrid, then make small touch-ups later in iPhone Mirroring or on the phone.

Who this works for

• iPhone Mirroring: macOS Sequoia 15 or later and iOS 18 or later, with the requirements above.
• TidyGrid needs a Mac with Apple silicon and a cable between the device and the Mac. Reading a layout is tested on iPadOS 15, iOS 16, iOS 17 and iOS 27.
• TidyGrid applying a layout is tested on iPadOS 15.3.1 and iOS 27.2. iOS 16, iOS 17, iOS 18 and iOS 26 are still in testing, and on those TidyGrid opens the layout read-only and says why.

What it cannot do

• iPhone Mirroring does not show more than one page at a time and has no way to select several apps with the pointer.
• iPhone Mirroring does not work with an iPad.
• TidyGrid does not work wirelessly. It needs a cable to the phone.
• Neither option can change the App Library's own categories.

Questions