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Just got new iPhone after backing up the previous iPhone I had. Set up the new phone as a "new phone" and then restored from iTunes backup. I found that many apps that I had on the old iPhone were not present on the new one now. (After a bunch of them sat there and said "waiting" right after I did the restore.) So there are a bunch of apps that are missing.

Then I went to iTunes and found some of the missing apps and clicked on "install" logical right? Then I try to "apply" this and get the message "The app "Southwest" was not installed on the iPhone because the app could not be found". (And a bunch of other apps.)

Oddly this is the same exact problem I had when I upgraded my wife's phone too a couple weeks ago. Does anyone know how to fix this and also keep the apps on the same page and folder as they were before? I know already I can go to the App store and re-download the apps yes but major time suck and a lot of time to re-arrange the apps again like I had them organized before.

Is this a common problem? It seems to keep happening to me. We just backup to the computer (not iCloud) since we would easily blow out the iCloud storage with the amount of data on the iPhones.

I would have a hard time believing that this is something I did wrong. I simply run the backup and expect the backup should work.

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  • Did you transfer every app from the phone to iTunes? Backup covers the data and not the apps.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Nov 6, 2016 at 0:05
  • "waiting" means queued up for download from the itunes store.
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Commented Sep 25, 2018 at 8:38

2 Answers 2

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In order for itunes to restore your apps, the app must be in your iTunes library. It sounds like they are not. Which means iTunes can't restore them.

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Your iPhone can get apps from the Apple Store or from iTunes transfer. The typical problem it's been the version of the app that was on the phone when the data was backed up is no longer available to download.

If you want to protect from this in the future, be sure to transfer a copy of the application itself to your iTunes library. This ensures that even if Apple pulls an app from the store or if the developer pulls it from the store or if you need a version that's older than the currently available, you can still reinstall the version of the app corresponding to your backup.

Versions of apps that are test or enterprise apps might need to be reinstalled - bit that usually is an edge case.

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  • I've bn v diligent about making sure to use iTunes function on the menu titled file / devices / transfer purchases and then I would do a backup this was done before I had these problems. The only unusual aspect of my setup is I have my iTunes media library in my Documents folder on an ext drv & not on my main iMac SSD drive. This was done to save space on the SSD. The odd thing to me is that when I looked at the folder that had the apps on it on the drive not all the apps were there and I don't know why that was the case. How can I make sure all apps that are on the phone r on the other dry.
    – Chet Shannon
    Commented Nov 21, 2016 at 1:39

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