Transfer Apps from iPhone or iPod Touch to iTunes

By:

If you have some items purchased in your iPhone or iPod Touch, and you want to transfer these items from iPhone or iPod Touch to iTunes. You can transfer these items to any iTunes/computer that is authorized by iTunes Store user name and password.

This guide will work on both Windows and Mac and iTunes 9 is used, So lets see how to transfer iPhone or iPod purchased items to iTunes/computer.

First you need to authorize the computer to tranfer purchased apps from iPhone or iPod Touch.

Step-1

Run iTunes and Click on Store menu and then Authorize Computer

Step-2

This will prompt for the account information, enter the user name and password to authorize the computer.

Thsi will start Access iTunes Store… wait for a while.

If computer is already authorized, you will get this message, Click OK button.

Step-3

Now connect you iPhone or iPod Touch to computer and Click on File menu then Transfer Purchases from iPhone.
-OR-
Simply Control+Click (Mac) or Right click (Widnows) on iPhone or iPod Touch device icon and select Transfer Purchases.

This will start transferring purchased as well as free items from iPhone or iPod Touch to your Computer.

All purchased and free items from your iPhone or iPod Touch transfered to your iTunes/Computer, lets see where iTunes saves the apps.

On the left side Click on Applications menu under Libarary section and then Control+Click on application > Show in Finder (Mac) or Right Click on application > Show in Windows Explorer (Windows). This will open the folder where iTunes saves the apps.

Using this guide you can transfer your apps to a new computer, from one computer to another, to iTunes, to iPod Touch, from PC to Mac and more…

Feel free to ask question about transferring your iPhone or iPod Touch data to Computer, if you have successfully transferred your data leave some comments below.

For more stuff like this you can: Subscribe to RSS Feed or Get Updates Via Email or Follow us on Twitter

Posted in: iPhone on February 8, 2010

Tags: Apps from PC to Mac, Apps to iPod Touch, Apps to iTunes, Apps to New Computer, iTunes, iTunes Store, Transfer iPhone Apps, Transfer iPhone/iPod Touch Purchases, Transfer iPod Touch Apps

Share/Save this Post

Comments:

Jack 15 February 2010 at 12:07 pm #

Thanks trickyguy you are awesome, finally i have saved my iPhone application in computer that purchases from app store.

Reply
CuteDragon 15 February 2010 at 2:37 pm #

Its not transferring my all purchases from iphone

Reply
- trickYguY 16 February 2010 at 6:46 am #
  
  Make sure you are using the same login info. that you have used during purchasing application.
  
  Reply
- biggsy 5 July 2010 at 5:52 am #
  
  I’m having the same problem. I’ve only ever used 1 itunes account but it still will not retrieve all of my apps (including both free and purchased ones)
  
  Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated
  
  Reply
Timy 28 February 2010 at 6:10 am #

Nice iTunes tips.

Reply
johnny 6 March 2010 at 7:44 pm #

all well and good, but how do you transfer the apps from itunes to ipod?

Reply
andiniyaya 5 July 2010 at 9:01 am #

hey, i wanna update my ipod touch version to the 4 OS. if the purchased app in my ipod touch transfered to pc, how to transfered it back to ipod touch after i update the version. thanks!

Reply
- trickYguY 6 July 2010 at 1:02 am #
  
  After updating to iOS 4, connect you iPod Touch to computer
  Run iTunes and click on Apps section on the left side and see if all required apps are available in it, otherwise drag and drop all saved apps to iTunes.
  Now click on your device icon on left side in iTunes
  Click on Apps tab
  Select apps that you want to transfer back in iPod Touch and hit the Sync/Apply button
  
  Reply
biggsy 6 July 2010 at 3:25 am #

Hi there

Basically, I haven’t synced my ipod touch for ages due to the hard drive on my laptop being small and constantly low on space.

I recently purchased a new external hard drive and have transferred my itunes library onto it. However, I have approximately 300 apps on my ipod, and when i click transfer purchases, not all of them (about 120) appear in the apps library in itunes (some free and paid apps have transferred whilst some have not).

One of the reasons for doing all this is so i can upgrade to iOS 4, but I dont want to do this until I know that I will be able to re-sync all my apps afterwards.

Is there anyway that I can get the rest of my apps off my ipod into itunes or will they all be there when I come to sync after updating? Does apple keep a record somewhere of the apps you have downloaded – both free and paid – so you can download them all again without having to select them individually – 120 apps would take a long time)

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Reply
- biggsy 6 July 2010 at 3:29 am #
  
  Just to clarify, 120 apps are not appearing – my apps library says I have 180.
  
  Also, I just noticed that when I click transfer purchases, the toolbar at the top says the missing apps are transferred but they still fail to appear in the library
  
  Reply
  - trickYguY 6 July 2010 at 8:09 am #
    
    Click on Apps section in iTunes and right click on any App and select Explore option, this will open up the folder where all apps copied. Check out how may apps are there and backup them if you want.
    
    Reply
    - biggsy 6 July 2010 at 4:52 pm #
      
      When I do this, there is only 183 apps – still approximately 120 missing
      
      Do you know of anyway that I can get the remaining apps off my ipod or will they be copied when I sync it? As I said above, I don’t really want to have to go through all 120 apps and download them individually
      
      Reply
      - Mohara 26 July 2010 at 4:51 am #
        
        Did you ever figure this out? I am having the same problem and cannot tale it anymore. I have followed all the instructions to no avail.
        Thanks.
      - biggsy 2 August 2010 at 9:49 pm #
        
        Mohara
        
        I was trying things for ages but nothing I could find would work. Whenever someone suggested a program to download and use (quite a few were suggested to me on yahoo answers when I posted a question about it), their replies always looked a bit dodgy and suspicious – so I avoided doing that.
        
        In the end I decided to give up trying and to just go for it. I had read in places that sometimes apple will let you download all the apps again (both free and paid) if you explain your situation (although they say this is an exception and that they don’t normally allow it).
        
        I did one last sync but they were still not appearing so i just proceeded to update the software. As far as I can see there has been no issues and I think all of my apps are there – although they still don’t appear in Itunes
        
        Hope this helps
Soleil 15 August 2010 at 7:58 pm #

Thank you! This was very helpful.

Reply