Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

I do not want iOS apps on my Mac, now that we have iCloud.

M

Mobile923

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 20, 2007
298
26
New York, NY
I've been trying to figure out why I need to 'Sync Apps' in iTunes now that we have iCloud. It's 20GBs of wasted space on a MacBook Air.

an earlier, similar thread suggested a solution to stop syncing apps without iTunes wiping them off an iDevice: uncheck the Sync Apps box, agree that it'll wipe it out, right when it starts the sync, UNPLUG. A little retarded, but it did the trick... I plug back into iTunes again, 'Sync Apps' is no longer checked off. I deleted the 20GBs of iOS apps from my Mac, so far so good.

So, I have it so the only reason I'd go back to iTunes is for 'Manually adding' songs, videos and books, and the only thing left to actually sync are photos from iPhoto (which i think iPhoto should handle on it's own, eventually). PC Free, right? WRONG.

NOW... when i'm trying to sync photos, iTunes wants to transfer 'purchases not found in your iTunes library" and proceeds to copy the apps back on to the mac or else it'll delete them from the iPad/iPhone.

What is the point? iCloud handles iOS backups, and previous App/music purchases... why am i forced to keep these apps on my mac?
 
M

Mobile923

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 20, 2007
298
26
New York, NY
monkeylui said:
Exactly.

& you're no longer "forced" to be tied to the machine. You can easily delete all of the apps & you can also go into the settings & tell it not to download apps. It's really not that big of an issue to solve.
Click to expand...

I do not see anywhere in the iTunes preferences to stop transferring purchases made on iOS devices.

Not really understanding having a 'master backup' when iCloud is the one handling it. iTunes in the Cloud sees my past purchases. Anything else i'm missing why we would still need to keep iOS apps in our iTunes?

Edit: Even in the iTunes Help center, searched for iTunes in the Cloud and it says:

"With iTunes in the Cloud, your iTunes Store purchases can always be available on all your computers and devices—wirelessly and without syncing."
 
ghall

ghall

macrumors 68040
Jun 27, 2006
3,771
1
Rhode Island
I've been trying to find a way to do this too. I want to manage my music, movies, and TV shows in iTunes, but when it comes to apps and books (which are basically useless on a Mac) I want to just manage those on the device itself.
 
A

andybrown44

macrumors regular
Mar 11, 2011
117
0
Hull, UK
The only reason you need backups on your PC is that Apple may decide to remove an app from the App Store and from iCloud altogether. Unlikely for most apps but something to be aware of.
 
A

andybrown44

macrumors regular
Mar 11, 2011
117
0
Hull, UK
I think I've found a solution. First of all, you need to reset your warning dialogues under iTunes preferences -> advanced. Then to make sure, right click on your phone on the left hand menu of iTunes and click 'Reset Warnings'.

Now sync your iPhone after installing a new app and it should tell you that you can transfer purchases on the phone. Tell it not to ask again and not to transfer purchases.

It should never do it again now.

Be aware if you buy a video on you iPhone and don't transfer it then it won't be backed up anywhere unless you force a transfer of purchases at some point.
 
boomhower

boomhower

macrumors 68000
Oct 21, 2011
1,570
56
Timely thread. I only have a 60GB SSD in my notebook and the app space is killing me.
 
N

nmork

macrumors regular
Jul 30, 2011
145
0
Under your bed.
I've found that a lot of the space used by apps on my PC was by apps that I used at one time but don't any more. I had something like 500 apps in my library, and only 93 on my iPhone. I have a 1TB HDD so space isn't an issue, but seeing the "100 updates available" got annoying after a while.

I fixed it by plugging in my iPhone, deleting all the apps from iTunes, then IMMEDIATELY right-clicking the phone and choosing "Transfer Purchases" - if you just do a normal sync, the apps WILL be removed from the device.

Might be worth a try.
 
M

Mobile923

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 20, 2007
298
26
New York, NY
Fixed! ...for now?

Okay, so far so good. Andybrown, I tried your tip; I reset the warnings, threw the iOS apps in the trash... but no warnings ever came up. When I tried to sync, iTunes didn't bother me at all about app syncing or transferring purchases, and I tried test-syncing twice last night. Weird, but good.

So to recap, as of right now:

-iOS apps are no longer syncing with iTunes, nor are they even present on my MacBook Air's SSD.

-I have "Manually manage music and videos" checked off, so my media can stay on an external/flash to transfer to my iDevices when needed. (just to save even more space)

-The only thing syncing through iTunes is my iPhoto Library.

-Apps and Backups are done through iCloud.

Thanks for everyone's input!
 
T

trekki

macrumors newbie
Nov 21, 2011
3
0
Hey guys! I don't know if this issue has been wrapped up or not, but I just discovered that Apple seems to have added in the option to stop syncing AND maintain the app data that is present on the phone. When you go to uncheck the "Sync Apps" A dialog appears saying "iTunes will no longer sync apps to the iPhone “****'S iPhone”. Do you want to keep or remove existing apps installed on your phone?" and then it gives you the option to stop syncing and delete them, or stop syncing and keep them. I am running iTunes 10.6 on Mac OS X 10.7.3 just for reference. Hope this helps!
 
Arelunde

Arelunde

macrumors 6502a
Jul 6, 2011
980
28
CA Central Coast
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

Good information. My PC is getting bogged down with all the iTunes stuff. Thanks for the info.
 
T

treichert

macrumors 6502
Nov 7, 2007
398
158
Aachen, Germany
trekki said:
Hey guys! I don't know if this issue has been wrapped up or not, but I just discovered that Apple seems to have added in the option to stop syncing AND maintain the app data that is present on the phone. When you go to uncheck the "Sync Apps" A dialog appears saying "iTunes will no longer sync apps to the iPhone “****'S iPhone”. Do you want to keep or remove existing apps installed on your phone?" and then it gives you the option to stop syncing and delete them, or stop syncing and keep them. I am running iTunes 10.6 on Mac OS X 10.7.3 just for reference. Hope this helps!
Click to expand...

Finally!

Thanks for the tip!
 
P

pithytoothbrush

macrumors newbie
Mar 11, 2012
5
0
iTunes in the cloud doesn't store all apps I've found. I downloaded a free one a few months ago right before it was removed from sale. Previously, that didn't mean I couldn't retrieve it from my purchases but on this occasion it was removed from both the store and my purchases. There's no sign of it on my account at all. Thankfully it was free and I have it in iTunes.

I could be wrong but I think it was the imame app. Anyone else experience this?
 
M

Mobile923

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 20, 2007
298
26
New York, NY
pithytoothbrush said:
iTunes in the cloud doesn't store all apps I've found. I downloaded a free one a few months ago right before it was removed from sale. Previously, that didn't mean I couldn't retrieve it from my purchases but on this occasion it was removed from both the store and my purchases. There's no sign of it on my account at all. Thankfully it was free and I have it in iTunes.

I could be wrong but I think it was the imame app. Anyone else experience this?
Click to expand...

Yea, any apps that were pulled aren't retrievable in the cloud fter deletion... one draw back from to syncing to a computer...
 
roxxette

roxxette

macrumors 68000
Aug 9, 2011
1,507
0
Man trustme you do want to keep your apps backed up on your computer , specially if you have over 50 apps ; i restore from icloud one time and i will never do it again takes a looooong time to download everything specially ipad apps
 
F

French

macrumors regular
Jan 13, 2011
198
0
I was also having issue with losing 32 gigs of space on my Macbook Air because of iOS apps and media. In my case I solved the problem by moving the library to an external drive and then deleted the original library. I created the new library by tapping the option key while opening iTunes. I created a new library on my external drive and then the next time I opened iTunes I tapped the option key again and it asked which library I wanted to open. I chose the external drive library and now whenever I open iTunes that is the library it opens. I have an external drive attached to my Airport router so that's the drive it's using.

This does mean, of course, that now I need to either be on my home network or have the drive plugged into my USB port in order to have access to my content in iTunes. I can live with that as I have the larger iPad and will just make sure I have everything I would want loaded prior to any trips.
 
M

Mobile923

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 20, 2007
298
26
New York, NY
roxxette said:
Man trustme you do want to keep your apps backed up on your computer , specially if you have over 50 apps ; i restore from icloud one time and i will never do it again takes a looooong time to download everything specially ipad apps
Click to expand...

I now have a secondary Mac mini setup at home as a media server, constantly on, with iTunes logged in there. It has the iTunes in the Cloud automatic download enabled for music and apps, so in case I ever need to pull an app off there (if it was pulled from the app store), it's not a problem. Keeping the space available on my 128gb air is crucial.

I haven't had a chance to check out the new Sync Apps fix in the iTunes update, but does anyone know if it'll allow something like "Manually Manage Music and Videos" where you can drag and drop an app from your library to your phone via iTunes?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom