5 years of deleted iPhone apps accumulated in my iTunes library

Works the same for me. I don't think there is any switch. The silver lining is that since the apps are still on your Mac, you could reinstall them to your iPhone even if Apple pulls them from iTunes. I've seen plenty of posts where the poster is sad that they can no longer re-download an app or media that has since been removed from iTunes.

If they bug you being in iTunes, offload them to an external drive. But, be very sure before you just simply delete them.

I was cleaning up my iTunes folder the other day and I had a "previous mobile applications" folder inside of my "mobile applications" folder. It's size? A mere 110gb!

iFanaddic said:

Hey everyone, I recently realized that I have accumulated 5 years of apps in my iTunes library. I'm working on cleaning this up, but I can't help but think this is bound to happen again. Isn't iTunes smart enough to know if I deleted an app on my phone it's because I don't have a use for it anymore?

Am I missing something? A switch maybe? Or am I bound to always come back to my mac to delete apps I don't want on my phone anymore?

Thanks for the answers

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Agreed...

What bugs me even more is that you can't delete applications, movies, tv shows, etc. from your iTunes account, all you can do is "hide" them...so, despite the fact that you (as I previously did) are going through the effort of cleaning up your iTunes library by removing apps (from the mobile apps folder) that you no longer need / use those very same apps are permanently included as part of your iTunes account because they can be hidden but never deleted (i.e. when you press the 'x' in the top left corner of an app, movie, tc show you are not removing it from your account but simply hiding it).

Worth noting, those who do not believe me can check this for themselves by going into their iTunes account and under the section titled "iTunes in the Cloud" you will see a line item to unhide any hidden items (assuming you have first tried to delete an item).

Would really like to get the capability to delete the things I don't want!

iFanaddic said:

Isn't iTunes smart enough to know if I deleted an app on my phone it's because I don't have a use for it anymore?

Am I missing something? A switch maybe? Or am I bound to always come back to my mac to delete apps I don't want on my phone anymore?

Thanks for the answers

Click to expand...

Many families (or individuals with multiple iOS devices) use the word same iTunes library to sync multiple devices. So an app being deleted off of one device doesn't mean the app isn't on another device (and should therefore remain in the iTunes library).

Would be cool if that was an option that could be enabled/disabled though!

iFanaddic said:

I doubt that's the reason. Apps are all redownloadable from Apples "Purchased" section, even if they were pulled from the app store. I remember doing it for a few apps. Unless it's not like that anymore.

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I am quite positive on this. If Apple pulls the content (app, music, video, whatever), it will disappear from your Purchased section. If you don't have a local copy, it's gone.

I'm not saying this happens a lot and surely big name apps are here to stay. But I have seen this happen to plenty of folks. Just a word to the wise.

Key words: If *APPLE* pulls the content.

If the author pulls it, it will still be in purchased. A good recent example is Flappy Bird.

But if Apple pulls it, it's gone forever. An old example was iMAME.

Pharmscott said:

I am quite positive on this. If Apple pulls the content (app, music, video, whatever), it will disappear from your Purchased section. If you don't have a local copy, it's gone.

I'm not saying this happens a lot and surely big name apps are here to stay. But I have seen this happen to plenty of folks. Just a word to the wise.

Click to expand...

I moved my iTunes library to an external drive, one reason is the apps are consuming so much space. I wish we had an option to easily clean up the library

zorinlynx said:

Key words: If *APPLE* pulls the content.
An old example was iMAME.

Click to expand...

Yep. And a new example is Flappy Bird. If you have it and delete it from both iTunes and your device, it's gone forever.