- Deleting App Purchase History
- How To Clear App Store Purchase History On Ipad
- How To Clear App Store Purchase History On Ipad
When you hide an app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and you view it in the App Store, it won't look like you bought it. But hiding the app won't delete it from your device or other devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID. Learn how to delete apps downloaded to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. To completely remove an app from your home screen, you need to delete it.
When you hide an app on your Mac, you won't get update notifications for it, and you won't see it on the Account screen of the App Store on your Mac.
If you use Family Sharing and hide apps, the apps will also be hidden from your family members.
Learn how to hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books.
iOS apps
You can hide apps in the App Store on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. You can’t unhide iOS apps, but you can still redownload hidden purchases.
Hide iOS apps
- Open the App Store app, then tap Today at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap or your photo in the upper-right hand corner, then tap Purchased. If you use Family Sharing, tap your name to see only your purchases.
- Find the app that you want to hide, then swipe left on it and tap Hide.
- Tap Done.
If you're a member of Family Sharing and you hide an app that you subscribed to, the Family Organizer will still receive notification of charges each time the subscription renews. Hiding an app doesn't cancel a subscription. Learn how to view, change, or cancel your subscriptions.
Redownload hidden iOS apps
- Open the App Store app, then tap Today at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap or your photo in the upper-right hand corner, then tap your Apple ID. You might be asked to sign in with your Apple ID.
- Scroll to the iTunes in the Cloud section and tap Hidden Purchases.
- Find the app that you want to redownload onto your device, then tap .
Mac apps
You can hide and unhide apps for your Mac in the App Store on your Mac.
Hide Mac apps
- On your Mac, open the App Store. If you're not already signed in, click Sign In at the bottom of the left sidebar, then enter your Apple ID and password.
- Click your name at the bottom of the left sidebar. Your purchased apps appear. If you use Family Sharing, choose your name next to Purchased to see only your purchases.
- Hold your pointer over the app and look for . Click , then select Hide Purchase.
- In the confirmation message that appears, click Hide Purchase.
Unhide Mac apps
- On your Mac, open the App Store.
- Click your name at the bottom of the left sidebar, then click View Information in the upper-right corner. If prompted, sign in with your Apple ID.
- Scroll to Hidden Items, then click Manage.
- Find the app that you want to unhide.
- Click Unhide, then click Done.
After you click Done, click the main App Store window, then refresh it. The app reappears in your Purchased list.
Learn more
- Hiding an app doesn't cancel a subscription. Learn how to view, change, or cancel your subscriptions.
- Hiding an item doesn't hide the record of the purchase. You can view your purchase history to see details of your purchases.
- Learn how to hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books.
- You can also delete music, movies, and TV shows; delete apps from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch; and delete books.
After you buy content from the App Store, iTunes Store, or make other digital purchases with your Apple ID, you can redownload your purchases on any compatible device. If you want to see a complete list of your purchases in chronological order, you can view your purchase history. In your purchase history, you can do these things:
- View when an order was billed to your account.
- View the date of a purchase.
- Resend email receipts.
- Report a problem or request a refund.
- Search by amount charged (on the web).
- See which payment method was charged.
If you're not currently logged in with the same Apple ID that you use to make purchases in the App Store and iTunes Store, if you're using a different device, or if you don't see your purchase, follow the directions below.
You might see subscription payments in this list, but you can't manage subscriptions from your purchase history. Learn how to view and cancel subscriptions.
On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
- Go to Settings > [your name] > iTunes & App Store.
- Tap your Apple ID, then tap View Apple ID. You might be asked to sign in with your Apple ID.
If you use Family Sharing, you'll see in your purchase history what you bought using your Apple ID, but you won't see what other family members bought. To see what other family members bought, sign in with their Apple ID. - Swipe up to Purchase History and tap it.
Purchases are grouped by the date that they were charged to the payment method that you have on file. You might see a Pending section at the top of your history; these items haven't yet charged to your account. By default, only the last 90 days show up in your purchase history. To change the range, tap Last 90 Days at the top of the screen, then select the range that you want to view. Learn what to do if you still can’t find your purchase or if you see unexpected charges.
Tap on the > to the right of the total billed charge to see details of an invoice, including the billing date and order ID. If the total charge was more than zero, you can tap Resend at the bottom of the invoice details screen to get a new email receipt.
Tap on an item inside an invoice to see the date that you purchased or downloaded the item, which might be different than the date that you were charged, and the name of the device that you used to purchase it. To request a refund, tap 'Report a Problem' to open the refund request website.
If you have recurring charges, learn how to change or cancel subscriptions.
On your Mac or PC
- Open iTunes.
- From the menu bar at the top of your computer screen or at the top of the iTunes window, choose Account > View My Account.
- Sign in with your Apple ID, then click View Account.
If you use Family Sharing, you'll see in your purchase history what you bought using your Apple ID, but you won't see what other family members bought. To see what other family members bought, sign in with their Apple ID. - On the Account Information page, scroll down to Purchase History. To the right of Most Recent Purchase, click See All. It might take a moment for your Purchase History to appear.
Purchases are grouped by the date that they were charged to the payment method that you have on file. You might see a Pending section at the top of your history; these items haven't yet charged to your account. By default, only the last 90 days show up in your purchase history. To change the range, click Last 90 Days at the top of the screen, then select the range that you want to view. Learn what to do if you still can’t find your purchase or if you see unexpected charges.
Click the Order ID number to the right of the order date to see the details of an invoice, including the billing date. If the total charge was more than zero, you can tap Resend at the bottom of the invoice details section to get a new email receipt.
Click More under the price of the item to see the date that you purchased or downloaded the item, which might be different than the date that you were charged, and the name of the device that you used to purchase it. To request a refund, tap 'Report a Problem' to open the refund request website.
If you have recurring charges, learn how to change or cancel subscriptions.
Deleting App Purchase History
On the web
You can view your purchases from the last 90 days using a browser on any device. Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, then sign in with the Apple ID and password that you use for purchases in the App Store or iTunes Store. If you need help with a two-factor authentication code, learn what to do.
If you use Family Sharing, you'll see purchases that you made using your Apple ID, but you won't see what other family members bought. To see what other family members bought, sign in with their Apple ID.
On the Purchases tab
Use computer keyboard as midi controller pro tools. Tap or click the Purchases tab, then tap or click All to see a list of all of your purchases from the last 90 days, except for Apple Music and iCloud storage. If you want to see charges for Apple Music or iCloud storage, or charges from more than 90 days ago, view your purchase history through Settings or iTunes.
To request a refund, tap or click 'Report a Problem.'
If you have recurring charges, learn how to change or cancel subscriptions.
On the Receipts tab
Tap or click the Receipts tab to view your purchase receipts for the past 90 days. Here you'll also see the specific amount charged to the payment method that you have on file and how specific purchases were grouped. You can also search by the amount that you were charged. If you want to see charges from more than 90 days ago, view your purchase history through Settings or iTunes.
Purchases are grouped by the date that they were charged to the payment method that you have on file. You might see a Pending section at the top of your history; these items haven't yet charged to your account. Learn what to do if you still can’t find your purchase or if you see unexpected charges.
Tap or click Receipt to the right of the total billed charge to see details of an invoice, including the billing date and order ID. If the total charge was more than zero, you can tap or click Print or Send at the bottom of the invoice details screen to get a new email receipt.
If you can't find a purchase, or you see unexpected charges
- You might have been signed in with a different Apple ID when you made the purchase. Sign in with that Apple ID to check if your purchases were billed to that account. If you can't remember the password to that Apple ID, we can help. If you have two-factor authentication turned on, you might be prompted to enter a verification code.
- If you don't recognize a purchase on your statement, compare your purchase history to your statement before contacting Apple. Also check any other Apple IDs that you might have, including ones for family members.
- Learn what to do if you don't see an in-app purchase, but it's in your purchase history.
- If you don't see your purchase, it might be hidden. Learn how to hide apps for your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, and how to hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books.
- You can see when your subscriptions were billed to you and at what price (with the exception of some subscriptions on reportaproblem.apple.com), but you can’t cancel from your purchase history. Learn how to view and cancel your subscriptions and other recurring charges or downgrade your iCloud storage.
- If you receive email notifications about your purchases, the email might not be from Apple or reflect actual charges to your account. Learn how to identify legitimate App Store or iTunes Store emails.
- If you still can’t find your purchase and you’ve tried all the steps above, contact Apple Support.
Learn more
- Learn how to pay an unpaid balance in the iTunes Store. You must have a valid payment method on file to make purchases in the App Store or iTunes Store. You’ll have to fix your payment method and pay for any pending purchases before you can request a refund.
- Learn about how App Store and iTunes Store purchases are billed, including purchases made with Family Sharing.
- If you want to learn more about a purchase, or redownload an item, redownload your previous purchases.
Store availability and features might vary by country or region. Learn what’s available in your country or region.
I like Walt Mossberg. Most of us in tech have been reading him since, well, we could read. He spent more than three decades at The Wall Street Journal and is now at The Verge. I'm telling you this because Walt came out with a helpful article the other day that got me thinking.
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Walt went through his iPhone apps and deleted half of them. Like me, he has the maximum amount of storage on his iPhone (128GB), so it's not as important to him as to those suffering on 16GB phones. Even so, clearing out apps can remove clutter. Removing clutter is always a good thing.
I don't have all that many apps installed on my phone, although it's still worthwhile cleaning them out. But I do have is an insanely large library of purchased (or 'purchased' if you count free apps) apps in my App Store library.
I bought my first iPhone eight years ago. It was within weeks of the App Store opening, and there were all of 25,000 apps on the store. I remember because I scanned through every.. single .. one. If you were dedicated (and considering getting into the app business), you could do that back then.
I won't bore you with the story of my limited adventures as an app developer. You can read all the sordid details (including financial results) here, if you want.
In any case, the point is that I was exploring what apps were becoming, and so I downloaded a metric frak-ton of them. They are still in my purchased list to this day. That's clutter.
How To Clear App Store Purchase History On Ipad
You might wonder why that's an issue. After all, they're not all installed on your phone, right? Thou speaks truth to power, my young padawan, but there's more to it than that.
Take, for example, my need to find a teleprompter app yesterday. I had used it a few years before and I suddenly needed it in a hurry. Yes, I have a life where I have sudden teleprompter emergencies.
I liked this app because it had an iPad component as the prompter, as well as an iPhone remote control capability. Anyway, I didn't remember the exact name, and I found myself on my phone scrolling down screen after screen after screen, seemingly forever.
It would be nice to delete all those old apps from my library so they didn't show up on that massive purchased list. As I looked into how to do this, I found another, um, less savory reason to delete apps from the purchased list. One guy (who I'll let remain anonymous) said he was getting married and didn't want all of 'those' purchases visible to his new spouse out of fear of embarrassment.
Then there's the more serious version of that argument. Let's say you're looking up medical information, and then find an app about some condition you don't want others to know about. Or you've downloaded an app from a political party, and you don't want others to easily find out your affiliation.
The reasons you might not want anyone to know about certain apps you downloaded go on and on. Privacy is important. For some people, it can be a life and death issue. For all these reasons, being able to delete apps from your purchased history is a good idea.
Fortunately, there's a way to do it. Sadly, because this is an Apple product, it's only a half-ass solution (more on that below). But, hey, it's better than nothing.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here
That's right, folks. We're about to go where no one wants to go: iTunes. To pull off this little trick, you're going to need to launch iTunes.
Let's say you want to remove Pokémon Go from your purchased list. Go ahead and launch iTunes on your computer. I'm sorry. I didn't design it this way. You can take a two hour shower after.
Once you're in iTunes, click over to the App Store. If you can't find the App Store in your desktop iTunes application, tap the drop down menu on the upper left of the iTunes window that typically says 'Music, Movies, and TV Shows'.
Click Edit Menu, then check the Apps item, and click Done. Don't forget to click Done, or the Apps item won't show up on the menu. Now, click Apps, and you'll be in the App Store for your mobile devices.
Aside: how odd is it that, on your Mac, when you add Apps to your iTunes, it's not the Mac App Store? Just saying. When you use iTunes, you pass into the city of woe, you pass into eternal pain, you go among the people lost in a black sulkiness which can find no joy. I am convinced Dante Alighieri is a member of the iTunes dev team.
Now that you're in the city of woe, go up to your Account menu and click Purchased. You can also do it from the App Store by clicking the little Purchased link on the left side of the screen.
This will drop you into the big list of all the apps you ever bought (or got for free). In a slight nod to usability, Apple does allow you to sort the list by Most Recent or Name, and do a search. So, yay to that.
Our target for this example is the Pokémon Go app in the middle of the list below. See that little X pointed to by the arrow? When you hover your mouse pointer over an icon, that X appears.
Click it, and the app will be hidden. In the before/after shot above, you can see that the app has disappeared. Here's the before and after on the iPhone itself.
By the way, here's one of the times it might be nice to hide an icon. As you can see, the first icon on the list is for the Republican National Convention. No, I'm not a Republican. I'm also not a Democrat. However, I do mock them as part of how I make my living, so having the app is useful. See my tweet history, if you're really curious.
Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away
Actually, in this case, it's more like Apple taketh away, and then Apple giveth. In any case, it's really annoying. But this story wouldn't be complete without the last iTunes bite-you-in-the-butt detail of the day.
By now, you probably think you're all good. You've finally and permanently removed those apps you no longer wish to be associated with -- or those that are simply cluttering up your iCloud-based life.
Not so much. For once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will. Yes, I'm mixing the Divine Comedy with Yoda quotes.
In any case, when you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back. Here's how. Follow along with me.
Still within iTunes on your Mac or PC, go to the Account menu and then select View My Account. You'll need to log in, even if you're already logged in.
On your Account Information screen, you'll see a section called iTunes in the Cloud. In the middle of that section, you'll see a line for Hidden Purchases. Yep, the devil is in the details. Click Manage.
And there you go. The purchases you were hoping to delete were not, in fact, deleted. They're just hidden.
Yes, that makes the process of sorting and organizing your application collection easier. But if you wanted to permanently remove an app for any of the reasons I discussed above, Apple will not allow it.
That's right. Like almost everything else you now do online, apps you install on your iDevices leave a permanent and non-expungeable breadcrumb trail. So, the next time Apple goes on national TV and spouts off about protecting your privacy, remember this.
Private isn't private. It's just hidden for now.
You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.
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Security iPhone Hardware Mobility Smartphones TabletsWe don’t typically run one-word answers to reader questions, but it’s worth it in this case, because we regularly receive a question similar to this one from Macworld reader JLR:
I want to dump, forever, some music and iPhone apps from my iTunes account and not have to deal with them just “hiding.” Is this possible to do?
No.
OK, I can’t help myself, I need to give a complete answer here. Apple lets you hide purchases from appearing where they typically display in a list or are available via Family Sharing, but the purchase remains part of your account information and can be viewed when you examine your account. Apple hasn’t explained why you can’t delete your purchase history.
Ask Mac 911
We’ve compiled a list of the questions we get asked most frequently along with answers and links to columns: read our super FAQ to see if your question is covered. If not, we’re always looking for new problems to solve! Email yours to [email protected] including screen captures as appropriate, and whether you want your full name used. Every question won’t be answered, we don’t reply to email, and we cannot provide direct troubleshooting advice.
Whether it is a knockoff of Candy Crush Saga or something you'd rather forget about, most of us have downloaded an app that we'd rather other people not see. And while Apple keeping track of every app we've ever downloaded is handy when you want to re-download an app without paying the purchase price again, it's inconvenient in cases where you would rather hide the app.
Here's how to remove the app from your Purchased list.
- Launch the App Store.
- Tap your profile picture in the upper-right corner of the App Store screen.If you don't see your picture, move to the Today tab by tapping it at the bottom of the screen.
- To hide an app on this list, slide your finger from right to left on the app. A Hide button will appear. Tap Hide to hide the app.
- You can filter the list from all apps to only ones you don't currently have installed using the tabs at the top. You can also search for a particular app using the search box at the top of the window.
How to View Hidden Purchases
Apps that you hide from the purchased list in the App Store aren't gone. You can still see apps you've hidden. Here's how:
How To Clear App Store Purchase History On Ipad
- In the App Store, tap your profile picture just as you did to remove the app from the purchased list.
- Tap on your account. It should be the top choice on the pop-up window.
- Everything you have hidden from the list will show up on the next screen. From here, you can re-install any you want to keep by tapping the Cloud icon.If you don't see the app you're looking for, tap iPad Apps in the upper-left corner, and then tap iPhone Apps.
- You can also view hidden purchases by tapping Purchase History. By default, this screen will only show purchases from the last 90 days, but you can view your entire account purchase history here.