how to see all apps youve downloaded How to find purchased apps you've hidden on iPhone and iPad. The App Store has been around for over a decade now, and most of us have amassed quite a lot of apps since the App Store debuted in 2008. Some of those purchases or downloads we've acquired may be embarrassing to potential snoopers, or perhaps you just don't want to see it in your purchase history. Fortunately, it's possible to hide apps in your purchase history, as well as view them. Here's how. How to hide apps from your purchase history. Want to make sure no one can see your potentially embarrassing purchases? It's super easy to hide apps from your history. Launch the App Store on your iPhone or iPad. Tap on your Account avatar in the top right corner of every view (except for the Search). Input your password or Touch ID/Face ID if prompted. If you have a lot of purchases and know the specific app you want to hide, just search for it in the search bar . Swipe to the left on the app you want to hide. How to find hidden apps you've purchased. So you've hidden those apps that you don't want others to see you purchased. But how do you find them again in your purchase history if you want to download them again? Launch the App Store on your iPhone or iPad. Tap on your Account avatar in the top right corner. Tap on the cloud arrow button to download the app on your device next to the app that you want to re-download. Unfortunately, if you hide a purchase, there doesn't seem to be a way to remove it from the Hidden Purchases list. You'll need to find it manually in your Hidden Purchases and re-download it each time you want to get it back if it was deleted, or search the App Store. How to hide apps from iOS search. If you're afraid that someone may pick up your phone and search for something with and iOS Search, and you don't want anything potentially embarrassing to pop-up in those results, then you can make sure that certain apps don't appear. Launch Settings on your iPhone or iPad. Scroll down and tap on Siri & Search . Toggle both Siri & Suggestions and Allow on Lock Screen to OFF (not green). How to hide apps in folders. You could always just go the traditional route of hiding apps from others, though it may not always work out. Yup, that's right—just tuck those secret apps away in folders on your Home Screen. On your Home Screen , tap and hold on an app icon until everything starts jiggling. Find the app you want to hide, and drag it into an existing folder, or on top of another app to create a new folder. The first page of an app folder can hold up to nine apps, which show up as tiny icons on the home screen. If you want to hide it from others, make sure the app is on the second page, at least. Maximize your privacy. Maxboost Privacy Screen Protector ($12 at Amazon) If you want to protect your screen but have a little privacy too, these are a good option. Privacy screen protectors mean others can't see your screen unless they're directly in front of the screen, so no more prying eyes! Maxboost is also of decent quality and the price is right, as you get three in a pack. iCloud Storage (Starting from $0.99 for 50GB) If you often download a lot of apps, you should look into iCloud storage. While you get 5GB for free, that is definitely not enough for backing up all of your iOS device's data, as well as storing photos, documents, and app data, including the ones you want to hide from your purchased list. Getting an additional 50GB is just a dollar a month, and the higher tiers are fairly reasonable as well ($3/mo for 200GB and $10/mo for 2TB). Questions? These are the best ways to hide some potentially embarrassing apps from prying eyes should you ever need to. Have any questions about getting to your hidden purchases? Let us know in the comments and we'll do our best to help. How can you see all the apps you’ve ever downloaded? If you can’t remember the name of that fun cube blast game you enjoyed playing on your daily commute or that handy photo editing app, and you uninstalled it long time ago from your device, there is an easy way to help you find it again. It is also a useful general tip, because anyone can lose their device in a hardware failure or theft and will have to install all apps again. Whether you’re an iOS, Android, or Windows 10 Mobile user, as long as the app hasn’t been discontinued, you can always redownload it. Paid apps too – and you won’t have to pay for them again. Even if the app has been pulled off the store, if you’ve paid for it, you’ll still be able to redownload it free of charge. On Android. To do that, you’ll need to find your Android app history. You can do this on your phone or on the web. On your Android phone, open the Google Play store app and tap the hamburger menu icon and then tap the My Apps section. This is where you can reinstall past downloads and also update your installed apps. Make sure you are logged in the account that you used when you previously downloaded the app. On your computer , go to the Google Play store and click Apps > My apps . Also you may click this link. Again, make sure you are logged in the right account. Note that to make it easier, you can sort those apps by device. As an alternative, you may refer to the official guide from Google, although you won’t see any screenshots. On iOS. You can find your iOS app history on your phone or in iTunes on your computer. Besides apps, you can redownload any purchased songs, albums, movies, TV shows, books, audiobooks, or any other items that you bought with your Apple ID. Before that, you may want to make sure you have the latest version of iTunes, iOS, or macOS. On your iPhone or iPad , open the App Store app and tap Updates in the lower right corner. Tap Purchased/My Purchases to see a list of all the apps you’ve downloaded. To simplify the search: Tap Not on This iPhone to see a list of just the apps that are not currently installed on your device. You may also use the search box on the same screen and type in the name of the app you’re looking for. In iTunes on your desktop , click on the profile icon on the top pathing (it looks like the silhouette of a head) and from the dropdown menu, hit Purchased . That’s it, you should now see every iOS app you’ve ever downloaded. Apple also lets you to see only the apps you’ve downloaded on your iPhone or iPad, making it easier to hunt down the app you’re looking for. Note that if you have more than one Apple ID (or account), you’ll need to make sure you are logged in the account you used when downloading the app you’re after. As an alternative, you may refer to the official guide from Apple. On Windows 10 Mobile. To find your Windows 10 app download history, you’ll need any device with the Windows Store app. Open the Windows Store app whether on your desktop or mobile (looks like an image of a paper shopping bag), click your profile icon next to the search box, and click My Library . You may need to log in the (right) account to see the history. You’ll see a list of apps installed on your device. Next, you should click Show all to see a list of all apps associated with your Microsoft account. Among them, you should find your missing app. About The Author. admin. TKA is owner and passionate blogger of Technokarak from Delhi, INDIA. He is an Engineer and loves to discover and learn new things on Internet. At Technokarak, he writes articles on Wordpress, SEO, Mobiles, Tablets and other technical stuff. How to see all the apps you've ever downloaded on your iPhone in 6 simple steps. If you've recently bought a new iPhone, you might want to re-download all of your apps, especially if you didn't transfer them to the new device automatically. If you're having trouble remembering what apps you had, you can view all the apps you've ever downloaded through the App Store — at least, all the apps you've downloaded with your current Apple ID account. If you want to see the apps you downloaded using a different Apple ID, you'll need to log out of your current account and log into your older one first. For information on how to do this, check out our article, "How to change your Apple ID on an iPhone." Check out the products mentioned in this article: iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy) How to see all apps ever downloaded on iPhone using the App Store. 1. Launch the App Store on your iPhone. 2. Tap your profile picture in the top-right corner to access your account. 3. Under the Account menu, tap "Purchased." 4. If it asks whose purchases you want to see, select "My Purchases." 5. Under the "All" tab, you'll see all of the apps you have ever bought or downloaded using your current Apple or iCloud ID. You can use the search bar at the top to find a specific app, too. This will also show you the date the app was downloaded. If the app has a cloud icon with an arrow pointing down, the app isn't currently on your phone, but can be re-downloaded. 6. Under the "Not on this iPhone tab," you'll find all the apps you've had on previous devices, and apps you've deleted off of your current device. How to hide purchased apps from Family Sharing in iOS. Being able to buy an app once and share it with your family is tremendous. However, by default all your family members see all of your apps, and can download any of them. AppleInsider shows you how to choose what they can and can't get access to. Introduced in 2014 in iOS 8, Family Sharing is a great way to buy an app once and allow several people to use their own copy of it. That obviously spreads the cost but if you're the household's resident IT consultant, it's also a way to make sure everyone has access to the latest versions of the apps you've chosen. You have to first switch on Family Sharing by inviting each member of your family to the system. Once you have, though, they can see every app you've ever bought. Perhaps you don't want them to know that you have personally bought and tried every single chess app in existence, though. Or you'd be embarrassed that you're unable to resist each new To Do app that comes along. More importantly, perhaps you don't want them to see business or financial apps that perhaps they're not ready for. You've heard of kids making huge in-app purchases on games: they could do more damage to your bank account by running your favorite Forex investment app. So, hide anything you don't want them to be able to see. On your iPhone, go into the App Store and choose Updates . Then tap on your face icon at the top right. Next, tap on Purchased . If you haven't already set up Family Sharing then you go straight to the list of what you've bought. If you have, though, you need to tap through one more screen first. Choose My Purchases . The apps you've bought will be shown in reverse order of purchase. You can choose to see every app or just ones that you've removed from your iPhone but in either case the list will be unmanageably long. Unfortunately there's no way to mass edit a lot of apps or to mark everything hidden. You have to go through each one and choose to hide it. Swipe to the left on any app in the list. Be careful not to tap because then you'll go into the detailed description page for it and will have to come back out. When you swipe, you get the Hide button in red. Tap that and the app vanishes immediately. Not only does it disappear from the list but you can no longer find it even with a deliberate search. Of course, now the app has vanished, you can't see it. There's no way to un-hide the app from any other account but the master either. Go to the regular App Store search page and enter the app's name. If you still have it on your iOS device then it will be shown in the results with the word "Open" next to it. If you haven't still got it, then you'll see the iCloud download icon instead. It's a shame that the onus is now on you to remember what you've bought and hidden but it's more of an issue that you have to do it one at a time, app by app. Still, you get to keep the rest of the benefits of Family Sharing while giving yourself more control. AppleInsider has affiliate partnerships and may earn commission on products purchased through affiliate links. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content. Comments (1) cheesehead dave. Unless I'm doing something wrong, this appears to have been removed from the iOS 12 public beta. How To: Use iTunes to View and Manage Purchased Apps. As covered in an earlier How-To column, the Purchased apps list is extremely handy for seeing which apps have been downloaded on to your account, and to re-download apps that have been purchased already. By accessing it from the Updates section on iPhone/iPod touch or just selecting its tab on the iPad, a whole world of old apps is there to be rediscovered. Well, at least if you’re not an appaholic. See, on iOS 6 in particular, if you have a lot of apps in your purchased history (including free downloads), it appears to cause the App Store to crash when trying to pull up the list. It ain’t easy accessing a list of over 1600 apps, apparently. However, there’s a two-fold solution. First, you can use iTunes on your computer to view your Purchased history. Open up iTunes. Click on iTunes Store in the left sidebar. Click the Home icon in the upper bar to the left of to go the home screen if you’re not already there. On the right side of the window, click Purchased. Click Apps on the top bar. This takes you to a list with all the apps you’ve ever downloaded, all loaded up at once. It may take a minute, and if you have like 100,000 apps downloaded, it may still crash, but for most people, even the crazy ones like me, it shouldn’t crash! Apps can be downloaded to your computer, and then installed on your device when it is next synchronized. It may also work with automatic downloads enabled. For those who want to re-download apps that have been removed from public view on the App Store, they will not show up when using the Search bar to filter out the list. However, they will appear when scrolling through the list. Tapping the Sort By: drop-down menu and selecting Name should make it easy to find – all apps are loaded at once, so scroll with care. Now, for those that may have apps that they really wouldn’t care to see in their Purchased list, like if its presence is causing the App Store to crash, iTunes can be used to remove these apps from the list. Just hover your pointer over the app’s icon, and click the x that appears in the upper-left corner. This will hide it from your Purchased history. As well, when you go on the App Store, the app will not say “Install” if you search for it, it will appear as if you’ve never downloaded it. Note that for paid apps, this does not mean that you’ve lost your record of having purchased it. If you try to re-buy it, the App Store will pull up a prompt saying that it’s free because you own a previous version of the item. This way, if you change your mind or accidentally remove an app you didn’t mean to get rid of, you can add it back without penalty.