iOS apps saved on macOS

[Benito]

I was looking at Storage Manager in Sierra and noticed that I have all my iOS apps saved to my macOS SSD. Is there any reason to have the apps saved to Sierra? Can I delete the iOS apps from Sierra to save a ton of space? If this is OK to do, how can I stop iTunes from saving the iOS apps again in the future to iTunes?

The apps end of using quite a bit of storage and it would be nice to know that I can delete them and open up a fair amount of space on my SSD.

 

[Rok73]

Have you previously synced your iOS device(s) with iTunes? If you have the iCloud backup turned on you can safely delete the apps from your Mac.

 

[Benito]

I always sync via iTunes and not iCloud.

 

[KALLT]

In that case, you need to keep them. Restoring with iTunes will always sync back the apps from your library.

 

[Benito]

OK, so iTunes needs to keep the app files when you sync with iTunes. I wasn't sure about this, thanks for the information.

 

[Rok73]

Well, how would you restore your apps while not backing up to iCloud and not having them on the Mac at the same time? It's either one or the other.