A method for displaying a view and a terminal device, where the method is applied to a terminal device on which a view control and at least one application are installed. The view control is a control in an operating system of the terminal device, and the method includes grouping multiple to-be-displayed objects in a first application using the view control, allocating a group identifier to each group, establishing mapping relationships between objects in each group and the group identifier of the group, generating, using the view control, a view comprising all the group identifiers and the multiple objects, displaying at least a part of the view, and preferentially displaying an object corresponding to a first group identifier when receiving a selection instruction for the first group identifier.