Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPad Pro MAX Number of APPS allowed on a 256 GB iPad Pro ?
- Thread starter vish26
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
No, there is no maximum number of apps that can be installed. The limiting factor is the amount of memory consumed by the apps and their associated data.
I mean you’d need to install hundreds of apps if not thousands before one runs out of storage. 
I wonder where this kind of thought originated from?!
I wonder where this kind of thought originated from?!
I mean, I guess? There's no reason the amount of apps alone on your iPad would cause it to slow down, though.
So knowing storage would not help me to.know if I have crossed the maximum limitsl of APPs before my device starts slowing down. isn't it ?
Because there is also a common belief that the APPS installed on your device should be in sync with your RAM and not more than that.
I remember in 2014 when I used to have an iPhone 4S and suddenly it was working extremely slow and suddenly one day it went blank and when I had given it for repair it did get repaired and the guy who repaired my iPhone 4S also told me the phone that you are using and the AAPS that you have installed is way too much ! That is bound to slow down your phone.
It's not the amount of apps that could slow a phone down, it's the amount of storage used by those apps.
How old was that 4S went you sent it in for repair?
"the APPS installed on your device should be in sync with your RAM and not more than that." What does that mean? And no, the number of apps installed in and of itself will not affect performance - the issue is use of installed storage.
iPhone 4S was released in 2012 I guess so the phone was I would say about 2-3 Years old.
Nearly every 2-3 year old phone is going to "feel" slower than it was when you got it, regardless of app amount.
Basically there’s no issues related to the number of apps installed on its own. Your device might slow down if there’s not enough storage left or you’ve updated to the latest version of iOS that requires more hardware resources.
Your previous repair man either doesn’t know anything about software or lied to you.
Your previous repair man either doesn’t know anything about software or lied to you.
Last edited:
As others have said it’s about how much of the total storage you’re using on the device, not the number of apps. Every app is a different size and so that number will be different for my uses than yours. I‘ve seen suggestions that it’s best to leave at least 10% of total storage available as that helps the system run more smoothly. This is why I tend to recommend people buy one storage above what they think they need.
It is. Some people occasionally refer to this as memory even if that’s not really our modern understanding as we refer to memory as RAM.
I mean you’d need to install hundreds of apps if not thousands before one runs out of storage.
I wonder where this kind of thought originated from?!
Very good question. I can also install thousands of applications on any other computer. As long as I don’t run out of storage or open them all at once nothing’s getting slow.
Sorry that’s BS. The amount of installed apps has no limits. It just takes up space on the storage chips. When you run out of storage things may slow down.
But I thought slowing down of device has got to do with RAM on that particular device and not storage actually isn’t it ? Storage is just physical storage of that APP where as it is RAM that plays a role in how much space is used by the APP and ultimately resulting in smooth runnning of the Device. So why do you say Storage? Isn’t storage like how many passengers can fit in a car, but RAM is like the Engine of the Car which determines how smooth and efficient you drive is gonna be ?
Well if we have to be really specific about it there are three factors that can affect the device performance (in terms of how fast or slow it operates) - CPU, RAM, storage. CPU is kind of clear. Obviously the more cores and threads it has, the more processes it can handle in parallel. This is something you do not control once you buy your device. Same with RAM. You cannot change the RAM so this is something buyers have to have in mind when they buy their device.
The last thing is the storage. iPads use SSD. For a device to work (no matter if it's iPad or iPhone or Mac or Windows PC) they need free storage space to do operational stuff. As part of the work of apps some files have to be manipulated. As a general rule in programming operations where you read and change a file in the same time is not a good idea. This is volatile operation that would fail. To make such changes we usually use temporary files/variables where we copy the data that we want to manipulate. To do this we need free storage/space. This is why we say that if you have less than 10 % free storage on your device, the system might not operate at optimum.
I am not into the details how iOS works exactly but I would assume the system core needs some storage space available for similar reasons.
Last edited:
Usually yes, but especially on older devices with less RAM, the storage will be used as something called virtual memory when the main memory maxes out. Less frequently accessed apps gets stored there because it has to free up space for the currently actively running apps. The slowdown happens when the computer loads the application back from the virtual memory into the RAM and at the same time writing some of the programs in the memory into the virtual memory. The reason computers slow down when the storage is almost gone is because the read/write speed of SSDs will slow down if it's nearly full and because of this, swapping in and out active/inactive apps becomes very slow. I don't see this being an issue anytime soon with an iPad Pro.
No, they don't. They use flash memory (can't recall if it's NOR or NAND).
SSD's also use Flash memory
Thanks for the clarification! I read somewhere that it is SSD hence my mistake. Thanks for pointing that out!
iOS devices manage their RAM automatically. You can occasionally force quit an application if you feel the system is performing less efficient. In my experience hardly anybody restarts their iPhone or iPad either so these tend to run a long time.
There is no maximum otherwise Apple would have it specified on their website.
PS: please don’t make analogies to car engines. That serves no purpose. Computer systems and combustion engine vehicles are different. Let’s just stick to common computer knowledge.