How To Prevent Android To Automatically Add Icons To The Home Screen

Whenever you install an app on your Android device using Google’s Play store, an new shortcut icon will appear on the home screen. It’s sometimes useful, but often it isn’t if you have a well organized, customized home screen theme.

It is controlled by the Play Store, not by the app itself. So the solution is hidden in the Play Store settings.

The Google Play application on your Android device offers several preferences that impact application installations and apps in general on the device. There you find an option to disable the adding of application icons to the home screen during installation.

Just open Play Store app > Open menu > Open Settings menu > Untick option “Add icon to Home screen”.

Next time when you install a new app, the icon will appear in the all app menu, but not on the home screen. You can restore the original functionality at any time by repeating the process described above but with the difference that you need to check the preference this time. [via ghacks.net]