How to find purchased apps you’ve hidden in iOS 11

You can hide purchased apps you no longer want to see — but how do you get them back?

I've been an iPhone user nearly ten years. That translates into a lot of purchased apps over the last almost-decade, and I'm not exactly thrilled about each and every purchase. (Did I need seventeen sticker pack apps when those launched? Probably not.) So I love the fact that you can hide apps from your previous purchases list to make the apps you do want to re-install easier to find.

But, as Gadget Hacks discovered, there's a bit of a fly in this hidden-purchase ointment: While you can easily hide purchases by swiping on them, you can't actually find them again on your iPhone or iPad. As far as I can tell, there's no "Hidden Purchases" tab or secret menu item.

There is, however, a work-around: iTunes. Despite the note in the Gadget Hacks article, you can still view hidden purchases even though the App Store no longer formally lives on the Mac. Here's how to do it.

How to find purchased apps that you've hidden

These steps work as of iTunes 12.7.0.166.

  1. Open iTunes on your Mac or PC.
  2. Go to the Account menu.
  3. Choose View My Account.

  4. Authorize your account with your fingerprint and/or password.
  5. Scroll down to Purchase History and press Manage next to Hidden Purchases.
  6. Select Apps on the upper right side of the screen.
  7. Choose the apps you wish to unhide.

What do you think?


Is this process cumbersome? (Yes.) Should there be a solution on the iPhone or iPad directly? (Probably.) We've filed a radar for Apple at rdar://34526196, but let us know what you think in the comments, iMore!

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