Hide Purchases from the App Store in iTunes, iOS, & Mac OS X
New to Mac OS X and iOS is the ability to hide purchases from appearing in the Mac App Store, iOS App Store, and the iTunes Store purchased items lists. This is great if you download tons of stuff but use only a fraction of apps, and you don’t want the other items clogging up your purchase history. It’s also really easy to unhide purchases from all the online stores, and we’ll cover that too.
Hide Purchases from the iOS, Mac, & iTunes Stores
Hide a Purchase in iOS:
- Swipe over any app to reveal the “Hide” button
Hide a Purchase in iTunes App Store or Mac App Store
- Click on the “Purchases” tab, hover over any purchased item and click on the (X)
Of course hiding the purchases is only useful if you can see them again if you need to. That’s just as easy, and regardless of iOS or Mac OS X it’s done through the account settings of iCloud:
View Hidden Purchases
Unhide purchases in iOS:
- From Account settings, tap on ‘Hidden Purchases’ under the “iTunes in the Cloud” subheader
Unhide purchases in iTunes or Mac OS X:
- From Account settings in the iTunes or Mac App Store, click ‘View Hidden Purchases’ under the “iTunes in the Cloud” subheader
These features were added in Mac OS X 10.7.2 and iOS 5 and continue to be available.
Cheers to 9to5mac for the iPad screenshots and AJ for the Mac OS X screenshots.
I have apps that i have purchased but really don’t want anymore that are deleted and i thought it was long gone until i found out it wasn’t. Is there any solution to getting rid of the app history or will apple come up with a new update for that. I tried hiding the app history except it still bothered me because any one could look at it even though there is a password. I do not want any history of those app anymore.
[…] Reloading an App Store page is also an easy way to resolve quite a few common issues, like when the App Store claims to be inaccessible, new app updates aren’t displaying, or when recently purchased items are missing from the Purchased list. If something is still not appearing in the purchases list after a refresh, it could be hidden, here’s how to unhide it. […]
[…] you can always hide a purchase from the App Store again by swiping next to its name in the purchased list. […]
[…] If an app is missing from that list and you are certain you bought it with the same Apple ID, check the hidden purchases list. […]
What if I want to get rid of some of those old purchases that I will never use again? Can those be removed completely? My kids download 100’s of those annoying free apps, play them once and then delete from from the iPad. The store is clogged with all of this stuff and I want to get rid of it.
So if I migrated from MobileMe and I use a different account for the iTunes Store, there’s no way I can view the hidden purchases?
@Sam
Your question seems to be confusing a few different ideas.
In the Mac App Store go to the menu item ‘Store’ and look at which account you are currently logged into the store under.
This may be your MobileMe id, or your iCloud id, or any other id you may be using for the store. They are only related to the degree that you may have logged into the Mac App Store under.
There is no need for your Mac App Store id to be the same as your iTunes id, nor your MobileMe id, nor your iCoud id, nor your Apple Developer id, nor your registered app seller id, etc.
Do you see the point I am making? You Mac App Store id is your Mac App Store id and nothing else. If you use the same id for other purposes then that is fine and dandy but there is nothing stopping you having separate ids for each and every service if you can tolerate the complexity and possible confusion.
Awesome. Erroneously had hidden my fav app. Then uninstalled it. It was asking me to buy it again on the app store when it was just hidden ( strange) but with your help I got it back. Cheers mate!
If you hide a purchased item, and realise you want to get it back, you are not billed again, it´s just displaying the price, since the app store initially only check in your library/device and unhidden purchase history, but when you click buy, it says you can download it for free…
I believe this is an iCloud feature and not an iOS 5 or OS X 10.7.2 addition.