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I'm running iTunes on Windows 7, and at some point (or rather, at multiple points) I must have accidentally pressed the 'Cancel' button when it asks if I want to remove the app from my hard drive when deleting it in iTunes

The net result is that I have 503 apps in iTunes, and 598 apps in my 'Mobile Applications' folder.

Is there anyway I can tidy these up? ie some way within iTunes that will clear the Mobile Applications folder of any apps that aren't in my iTunes liberary?

Thanks

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I don't know of an effective solution.

One approach could be trying to process the iTunes Library metadata files to see if you can extract the raw filenames from that. There are some third party programs that read your iTunes Library. There's an one open source library called sift that does that.

In addition to this, I can think of a workaround requiring some work. Not sure if it will work for you:

  1. Remove all apps from iTunes without deleting the files.
  2. Re-add the complete folder.
  3. Re-delete all the apps you don't want from iTunes, making sure you chose to delete them from disk as well.
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  • Thank you, I'll look into the first suggestion :) The second suggestion is very tempting too, but will I lose all of my app data if I do that?
    – Nick
    Aug 17, 2013 at 15:44
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    What do you mean with app data? If you mean the data that is on the apps on your device, that will be unaffected. The IPAs are just the bundles downloaded from the app store, they don't store any user data. The user data is stored in your iPhone and in your iPhone Backup (either in iTunes --inside a different folder-- or iCloud). Just make sure that you don't sync your phone with your computer while your App Library is empty.
    – Ricardo Sanchez-Saez
    Aug 17, 2013 at 15:46
  • Actually, on second thought I think that even if you sync your phone with an empty App Library you won't lose anything. But better safe than sorry. ;-)
    – Ricardo Sanchez-Saez
    Aug 18, 2013 at 18:31

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