How to Hide & Unhide Downloaded Apps from App Store on iPhone & iPad
iPhone and iPad users can hide apps that were purchased or downloaded from the App Store of iOS. By hiding an app in the App Store, it will not appear in the App Store updates section, and it will not appear to have been downloaded before.
Likewise, iPhone and iPad users can also unhide any previously hidden purchased app from the iOS App Store again, thereby regaining access to download the app and having it appear in the App Store as usual again.
Note this is hiding a downloaded or purchased app from the App Store, which is not the same as hiding apps from showing on the iOS device screen, nor is it the same as uninstalling and deleting apps from iOS. Hiding a purchased or downloaded app does not delete it from the device it was downloaded to, though you can certainly do that if you want to as well. Likewise, unhiding a previously hidden app does delete it or remove it, though to unhide the app you will download it again to the iOS device. Read on below to see how to both hide an iOS app and unhide an iOS app from the App Store.
How to Hide Purchased / Downloaded iOS Apps in App Store
Here is how you can hide an app from the App Store on iPhone or iPad:
- Open the App Store app
- Tap on the “Today” tab at the bottom of the screen (you can also tap on ‘Updates’)
- In the upper right corner of the screen, tap on your profile avatar logo
- Tap on “Purchased”
- Locate the app you want to hide, then swipe left on it
- Tap on the red “Hide” button that appears next to the app name
- Repeat with other apps to hide from the purchased App Store list if desired
Of course if you have hidden an app from the App Store in iOS, you may wish to unhide the app sometime down the road so that you can access and download it again via the App Store on iPhone or iPad again. Here is how you can do that.
How to Unhide Apps from App Store Purchases in iOS
Here is how you can unhide an app from the iOS App Store so that you can download and access it again on iPhone or iPad:
- Open the App Store if you have not done so already
- Tap on the ‘Today’ or “Update” tab at the bottom of the screen
- Tap on your profile avatar picture as found in the upper right corner of the screen
- Tap on your Apple ID, then sign in with the Apple ID password
- Scroll down and tap on “Hidden Purchases”
- Find the app you want to re-download, then tap the download button cloud arrow button
The ability to both hide and unhide apps from the App Store of iOS has been around for quite some time, but like many other features of iOS they have evolved over the years and the process is now a little bit different now then it was from before with earlier versions of the iOS software for iPhone and iPad.
Both hiding and unhiding apps that have been downloaded for free or purchased can be very useful for many reasons. Maybe you want to hide an app so that you stop using it or you are not tempted to download it again, or maybe you want to hide a particular app because it’s confusing with another one. Or if you’re a parent, perhaps you want to hide an app so that your child can’t download it. Administrators and those who manage public iOS devices also can have obvious use cases with this feature. And similarly, the ability to unhide apps that have been downloaded or purchased form the iOS App Store is equally important, just in case you need to access those apps again for whatever reason.
Do you know of another method of hiding and unhiding apps from the App Store of iOS? Did this tutorial help you? Let us know your experiences and comments below!
How do you put a app back to the cloud that is now hidden so when you delete it it puts a iCloud icon in the App Store
Can you tell me how to unhide App Store on iPad 3？
when I follow these instructions to hide apps, they always reappear the next time I open my purchases. Has anyone experienced this and found a solution?
Redownloading an app from your Hidden Purchases list DOES NOT UNHIDE IT. Why does does everyone say this? The app can be downloaded and used, sure. But it stays in your Hidden Purchases list for good. There is currently NO METHOD to remove it from the Hidden Purchases list and place it back into the Purchased list.
Not sure when but it is possible to Unhide an app… there is a button to tap to Unhide next to each app in the Hidden Purchases section.
Thank you this helped me so much
Debra,
I’ve learned this having many nieces and cousins and setting up their iPhones tablets when you set up the iPhone make it as a parent account so they have to have permission from you to allow them to download anything it works I set my cousin baileys iPhone and sense she was only 10 and I’m terrified of her having Snapchat or a fb behind our backs I set it up as a minor account with a parent lock everything she does or tries to download has to go through my aunts permission it’s very simple reset their phone deleting there iCloud and iTunes I’d and restart the process using your iCloud and iTunes I’d as a parent and link it to your phone so every time they download it’s sent to you for permission my aunts already stopped my cousin from getting tiktok and some other sketchy sites that I myself was like nope nope nope you’re to young for this. If you need further instructions feel free to email me
A more complicated question on this….We are on family sharing – 2 parents, 3 kids. One kid (older) bought/downloaded Snapchat. One of the younger kids got it downloaded because it was accidentally approved and I did not want him to have it. I have deleted it from his iPad. But because it was downloaded once he can download it again at any time. I have looked through “screen time” parental controls for a place to not allow certain apps but there doesn’t seem to be one. I tried to go in an “hide” the app in the purchases but since it was not purchased by him but his brother, the “swipe left to hide” does not work. Any thoughts on this?
STILL an ongoing problem! Ugh!!
A few weeks ago, my sister decided she did not want to be on Facebook any longer. She went to the AT&T store she usually goes to in South St. Louis County
She requested that the FB app be removed from her phone. The representative did remove it from her screen, he said he “hid” it. And to completely delete her FB account, she needed to remove the FB app from her home computer.
Despite asking her son and his girlfriend to help her remove it from the home computer, no one has found the time to help her.
In the meantime, she has begun to miss some of the pictures and posts from dear friends.
She can access her FB account by going to the App Store and pressing the OPEN button, but cannot restore the app to her screen.
She would not want to start over again. She just wants to restore it and Messenger.
Can you give me step by step instructions so I can assist her in restoring FB and Messenger to her iPhone.
In iOS 12.1.4, it appears there’s an additional step necessary if your goal is to hide the updates to an app which you have on the iOS device.
If the app is already on your device, and an update is already displayed under “Updates” – you have to uninstall the app (and, possibly, restart your iPhone/iPad) for the update to go away and stay away. Then you can reinstall the app via iTunes.
Not sure how that would work if you don’t have a computer, or if you’re not using the “business” version of iTunes (which is available from Apple at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208079).
In all it shows how to reinstall the app on the device you are using from the apps that you have hidden and uninstalled
But what I want to do is get it of the hidden purchases
The reason I want to do this is I have an IPad and a phone,what I want is that I can view the purchase on my I pad as well as my phone it won’t unhind the purchase it will only reinstall the hidden app
I have lost a couple of icons from my phone, but when I got to the purchased area they don’t have the cloud, just the open. How do I get the actual icon back?
This does not unhide apps…… it just redownloads them to your phone….. they STILL don’t show up on the “purchased” list.
@Patricia, I think you are doing something wrong, what are you trying to achieve? The article is titled “how to hide or unhide downloaded apps from the App Store” because this process will hide or unhide apps from the purchased list of the App Store on iOS, either for iPhone or iPad does not matter. The Apple ID must be the same, regardless, to have purchase history for that account.
If you click the download button, it will re-download the app if you had deleted it before.
If the app was not purchased on the currently signed-in Apple ID, then it will not show up on an unrelated Apple ID under the purchases list. Be sure you are using the same Apple ID.
I want the app to show in the ‘Purchases’ list again so my family members can also download it using Family Sharing.
Nice work woman!!!
Alas this does not work on iOS 10 and older.
However it does work via the old iTunes (2.6 and earlier) if you go to Apps and from the Account menu select Purchased. There you can hoover over the app icon and hide it by clicking on the circled X that pops up on the upper left.
Thanks for this tip, extremely useful