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Substitute AMAZON for Apple for the exact same situation.

I’ve been an Amazon customer for 20+ years (since they were just selling books on-line) and there have been many purchases I’d rather “forget” and just flat out delete but Amazon will not let you delete anything from your purchase history.

The only way that you can cloak those orders is Amazons offer is to “Archive” orders … but those orders are still alive and well in your limited Archive space. At this point there is a limit on the number of orders that can be archived (several hundred, IIRC).

I’m guessing that the AMAZON DATA SWEEPERS want to keep everything a customer has ever ordered (they probably track & record everything you’ve ever looked at as well) for their data sales team to monetize.

Big Brother are these on-line retailers who collect, package & sell everything we willing provide to them … in the name of customers.
Agree. Main reason why I hate this is because Amazon will take that info and recommend items to purchase. I'm tired of looking at toddler toy recommendations because my kids are no longer toddlers but I purchased a decent amount of toddler toys a number of years ago.
 
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I also like keeping things in order.

No-one else I know has heard of this, but I like to think I have OCPD. This is not OCD - it's classed as a personality disorder.

The main differences are (a) it's not a real medical term or issue and has no negative impact on one's life and (b) people with OCPD are likely to feel happy that they have it. I'm one of those.

It's also a spectrum, as it's usually used by people like me to sound cooler than defining myself the old fashioned way as "anally retentive" 😁 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive–compulsive_personality_disorder

Anyway: Until this thread I never cared about hiding crappy, useless apps I'll never download again, but now I do and will start swiping them away.
 
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I almost always start each new iPhone from scratch. I’ve had them for 18 years
Hey, not talking about the phone but the purchase history itself.

Open App store, click on your profile in the right hand corner, click on Apps, select 'Not on this iPhone', and scroll down through your history of purchases in 18 years. You might be surprised what you downloaded 18 years ago!
 
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Hey, not talking about the phone but the purchase history itself.

Open App store, click on your profile in the right hand corner, click on Apps, select 'Not on this iPhone', and scroll down through your history of purchases in 18 years. You might be surprised what you downloaded 18 years ago!
oh, never remotely thought about that? I didn't even know that was there so 🤷‍♂️
 
If you've been an iPhone user for 10+ years, there's probably a lot of junk apps that you downloaded. Do you take the time to hide them and keep your account clean?

I've been doing it but noticed when I go to the section for my hidden apps, I probably have hundreds in there so the iPhone hangs and stutters when I scroll through them.

Anyone else go nuts with this? It's a shame Apple won't simply let us delete the purchase history from existence.
I delete anything I don't need. My photos get onto my laptop and into the cloud. Important documents get saved the same way. Everything else gets deleted every month or so. I would go nuts if I couldn't delete stuff.
 
I delete anything I don't need. My photos get onto my laptop and into the cloud. Important documents get saved the same way. Everything else gets deleted every month or so. I would go nuts if I couldn't delete stuff.
Except you can't delete your purchase history, as per the OP's complaint.
Same with books. I once downloaded a book I'd rather no longer have in my purchase history that I downloaded as a joke years and years ago, and now I've got it haunting me for life.
 
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Except you can't delete your purchase history, as per the OP's complaint.
Same with books. I once downloaded a book I'd rather no longer have in my purchase history that I downloaded as a joke years and years ago, and now I've got it haunting me for life.
Exactly. Imagine a young teenager picking up a book called "How to Pick Up Women for Losers" or a fart joke book because they are bored at 1 am and have it sit in their iBooks library when they are full fledged adults.
 
Reading all these comments getting OP wrong hurts, but I understand the confusion.
I have spend too much time with the old buggy Hidden Purchases section, I hated it and am still surprised how long it took Apple to fix this basic feature, even though most people didn’t know about it.
 
Totally get your point, not really due to the humiliating factor since no one else can really see the apps I downloaded. Just annoyed at all the useless freeware I got, like calculator apps, flashlight apps, apps to track steps - which have all been replaced by bonafide genuine Apple apps.
Well it’s been hidden enough for years for some not to care air or, and they still treat it and the page before it in the App Store worse than, well anything else in the App Store. Or maybe there are some more legacy leftovers somewhere.
 
Hey OP here, apologies if I misused the word. Would appreciate if the topic doesn't go off the rails towards a witch hunt, wasn't my intent to offend anyone.

It's getting harder in this day and age to know which words to use and which not - every day there is someone offended in the papers by one word or another. Will edit the subject so it doesn't include that word.
The thing to realize is that everything anyone says offends somebody—a sad fact of life.
 
I need to clean up my iPhone as it is. Funny I just looked up my purchase history (on my email account) and the first three purchases I made were: iBonsai which is no longer available but similar to another called Prune, Angry Birds (no longer on my phone 😪) and Rush: Greatest Hits 1974-1987 still on but thinking of shrinking my purchased and ripped music on my iPhone as I stream these days but keeping it on my Mac.

Lots of apps are no longer on the App store, the marvelous Geneva Watch app I still have installed that looks like a complex timepiece, and the Infinity Blade game series.
 
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