How to Hide Purchases on Mac
Do you want to prevent an app from showing up in your purchased list on the App Store? You may occasionally download apps that you don’t want others to know about, or you might not want to see a reminder of yourself. Whatever the reason, it’s pretty easy to hide app purchases on a Mac.
Here, we’ll be focusing on hiding the purchased apps so that they don’t appear in the App Store updates section or in your purchased list on the Mac. It’ll still show up on your home screen, however. The app just won’t appear as if it was purchased before. And yes, you can hide downloaded and purchased apps in the App Store on iPhone and iPad too.
Are you interested in taking advantage of this neat trick on your Mac? Then read on.
How to Hide Purchases on Mac (App Store & iTunes)
Hiding a purchase, whether it’s an app or a song is actually a lot easier than you may think on macOS machines.
- First, we’ll take a look at how you can hide an app purchase. Launch the App Store app on your Mac from the Dock, Applications folder, or Spotlight.
- This will take you to the Discover section of the App Store. Here, click on your Apple ID name located at the bottom of the left pane.
- Here, you’ll see a list of all purchased apps. Hover your mouse cursor over the app you want to hide and you’ll notice a triple-dot icon show up. Click on this triple-dot icon.
- Next, choose “Hide Purchase” from the dropdown menu to continue.
- You’ll now be prompted to confirm. Click on “Hide Purchase” to save your changes.
- Next, we’ll take a look at how you can hide purchased music. Launch the Apple Music app on your Mac and head over to the iTunes Store section from the left pane. Here, click on the “Purchased” option located on the right side of the window, as shown in the screenshot below.
- Now, you’ll be able to view all your purchased music. You can hide an entire album or just an individual song. Simply hover the cursor over a purchased song or album and you’ll notice an “x” icon show up. Just click on it to hide your purchase and confirm your action when you’re prompted.
Keep in mind that doing this will not remove the particular app or song from your Mac, it basically just stops showing up in your purchased list. However, these hidden purchases will still show up in your purchase history. This is different from the purchased list.
If you use Family Sharing on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you need to keep in mind that your hidden purchases will not be available for people in your family group to redownload, as it won’t appear in their purchases either.
At this point, you may be wondering how you can unhide these hidden purchases if you ever want to at a later point. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that macOS makes it easy to manage all your hidden purchases, which is how you can unhide the purchases on Mac too, all from one place.
If you use an iPhone or iPad as your primary mobile device, you may also be interested in learning how to hide purchased apps on iOS and iPadOS.
What do you think of the ability to hide app purchases? Do you think this is useful? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
