How-To Geek

How to Hide Apps You’ve Purchased on Apple’s App Store and Google Play

phone and android

Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s Windows 10 all keep a list of apps you’ve purchased — or just downloaded, if they’re free. This list will become cluttered over time, especially if you download and try out a lot of free apps. But you can clean this list up, at least on iOS and Android.

This is particularly useful if you’re using Family Sharing on iOS, as you can hide certain apps you’ve previously purchased so they won’t be shared with your family members via iCloud. Either way, it helps clean up your list of purchased apps.

iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

On an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you can access your list of purchased apps from the App Store app. Open the App Store and tap the “Updates” icon at the bottom of the screen. Tap “Purchased” at the top of the list to view all your purchased apps.

Tap “My Purchases” to see your own list of purchased apps if you’re using iCloud Family Sharing.

You’ll see a list of all the apps you’ve ever purchased or downloaded. Scroll through the list or use the search box to search for individual apps. Tap “Not on This iPhone” or “Not on This iPad” if you just want to see apps you’ve removed from your device. When you see an app you want to hide, touch it, swipe to the left, and tap the “Hide” button that appears. The app will be hidden from this list.

Hiding an app like this won’t delete the record of your purchase if you purchased the app. You can still search for the app in the App Store and you’ll be able to re-download it for free if you’ve already purchased it. It just won’t appear in your list of purchased apps.

Some people report this doesn’t work reliably, and app purchases you try to hide will just appear later. If you have this problem, you can instead choose to hide apps from iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC.

Fire up iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC and ensure you’re signed in  with the same Apple ID you use on your device. Click your profile icon and click either “Purchased” or “Family Purchases.”

Select “Apps” and then select “All” to see a list of all apps. Click the “X” that appears at the top-left corner of an app’s icon and you’ll be asked whether you want to hide that a purchased app. Click “Hide” to hide it.

On the current version of iTunes, we didn’t see an “x” when we hovered the cursor over an app’s icon. However, when we moved the cursor to the top-left of the icon, it turned into a hand to indicate there was a link there. Clicking at the top-left corner worked, even though the “x” didn’t appear.

You should be able to hide other types of media you’ve purchased from iTunes in the same way.

You can also unhide apps you’ve previously hidden. This requires iTunes on a PC or Mac, even if you hid those apps on an iPhone or iPad. Either way, you need iTunes for this.

To unhide apps, click the profile icon in iTunes and select “Account Info.” Enter your Apple ID password when prompted.

 

Scroll down to the “iTunes in the Cloud” section and click “Manage” to the right of Hidden Purchases.

Select “Apps” to see a list of hidden apps, and click the “Unhide” button for each app you want to unhide.

Google Play on Android

You can also do this in Google Play on an Android device. First, open the Play Store, open the menu, and tap “My apps” to see a list of your own apps.

Tap “All” To see all apps, even ones that aren’t installed. Apps that aren’t currently installed will have an “x” on the right side of their card.

The “x” button only appears next to apps that aren’t currently installed, so you’ll have to uninstall the app from your Android device before you’ll be allowed to remove it from your purchase history.

Tap the “x” and then tap “Agree” to remove one of these apps from the list. It will no longer appear in the list of all your apps. To get a removed app back, just search for it in Google Play and download it again.


Microsoft’s Windows Store on Windows 10 doesn’t offer this feature, nor does the Windows Store on Windows 8. Microsoft is still running behind other app stores, so hopefully they’ll add this feature in the future.

Image Credit: Karlis Dambrans on Flickr

Chris Hoffman is a technology writer and all-around computer geek. He's as at home using the Linux terminal as he is digging into the Windows registry. Connect with him on Google+.

  • Published 10/22/15

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