Q: Transfer Purchases no longer working

After several months of dealing with iOS9's new way of "backing up" locally, I find that this is the simplest explanation for those who are STILL confused about how things work and how to maintain your "plug in to your computer on a weekly basis" backup schedule.

When you plug in an iOS9 device to iTunes and hit "Sync" or "Backup Device" iTunes is taking a snapshot of what download Apps you have on your device and where they go/how you've arranged them, along with other things like WiFi connections, Music, Books, Videos, etc. It's not actually PHYSICALLY transferring that data to/from your computer any more, it's just making note of what you had on there and where it was.

If you want to be able to "restore" from that backup you need to ensure that everything that was on your phone is on your computer and in iTunes.

The best way to accomplish that is to go your iTunes Preferences>Store and ensure that "Automatic Downloads" are on for everything that you want to maintain backups of from your phone are checked off.

Second, go to your account (the little silhouette icon in the top right of iTunes) go to "Purchased" and DOWNLOAD ALL of the apps/music/movies that you have in Apple's store records/cloud. Have it ALL on your iTunes for any potential "backup" configuration you make, otherwise when you attempt to restore from backup, if it's NOT on your computer it will no longer restore properly.

That's it. I've successfully restored full phone backups via this method and literally the ONLY thing that doesn't restore is Bluetooth profiles, which makes sense because those are tied to unique devices.

There's really no other way to do it by plugging in and backing up on iTunes. You can alternately turn on iCloud for Apps, Music, Videos, etc. and have everything backup/restore that way, but I find the amount of time that that method takes to download 30 Gigs of apps is pretty maddening and and sometimes no matter what I do, some apps don't ever properly download from the cloud. *shrug*

This just became an issue for me as well.  I have apps & ringtones/other tones that will not transfer over.  Apps that have been pulled from the App store (Peace) will not transfer from iPad to iTunes to archive/safe keeping.  Tones, it seems also do not transfer.  I understand apps being pulled, but it has been that once you have it locally, it will stay in you purchased history even if they are no longer (ie. older VLC) but its a new chapter with ios9.  Bummer.

This *****!

More features taken away for no reason.  This is absolutely the most resource wasting "update" i have ever seen!  The internet CANNOT HANDLE 100 GIGABYTE TRANSFERS EFFICIENTLY!  Apple, YOU ARE SELLING 128GB devices, which REQUIRE LOCAL backup capability!  Very very very few consumers have connections that can even come close to handling these kinds of transfers.  When your downloading an app here and there, no problem, but when i either buy a new device, or break one, and restore a 128GB device solely over the internet, this is LUDICROUS!

My immediate family Owns:

6 Iphone 5s to 6s

6 IPads

4 Mac based laptops

You will loose me as a customer very soon if you keep it up!

Steve Jobs made Apple.  When Steve Jobs was fired apple died.  When he came back, Apple became what we all love and know.  Steve Jobs has passed, and it looks as if apple will eventually die with him.  It will soon be on life support if it keeps going.  These large corporations think they are too big to fail, until they do.  Apple has not really improved anything since Steve passed.  Competitors are catching up fast, and will pass Apple soon.  I have already switched away from apple devices except iphone and Ipad.  Being a business owner i will most likely try a windows based handheld device soon, to compare.  If i like it better, then bye bye apple.  You know i tried apple for the exact same reason back in 2000, windows was giving me grief.  I became all apple.  Now it looks like things may be reversing.

The poor iTunes backup features are really driving me for so many years. I really don't understand why it is so difficult and troublesome to make a simple backup with all things of iDevices. The company is forcing you to use icloud backup and forcing you to backup all private photos etc to so-called cloud servers which is so safe in nowadays Internet century. Apple is gonna losing customers, including me for a must! The high-paid employees may be SO clever on the top of the hills and they don't really know and understand what their customers need!

thank u very much disco_bob, this helped me a lot, I really really appreciate that.

Just to be clear on this then,

I have Iphone 6 iOS 9.3.1   with I tunes 12.3.3.17   -   my phone is not backed up on the cloud it is backed up on computer, only thing I use the cloud to back up is my contact list and notes.

Some thing came up that made me wonder about this whole transfer purchases problem.

1st I noticed almost all my apps on i tunes show needed updated after transfer purchases.

Thus  when and if I "change" phones I am going to have to re-download or re-update all those apps that are showing Need to be updated on my new i phone unless I am willing to update them all "again" on i tunes on my computer.   This is a huge irritation to me and as a ex-computer programmer my self a rather senseless one at that. Like a lot of people who don't live in a "big" city I don't have "free" internet at my home, I have limited download ability, just enough to barely do normal browsing. That is NO video watching of any kind period. I go the normal suspects web sites (sports junkie), (never open a video and link) and with the normal updating that two desk tops, and one laptop use I run out three or four days before the month ends regularly, thus Any "downloads" of 1-2 gig of data will lead to my internet going to a snail pace for over a week.  I get a certain amount allocated a month, use it then your speed drops to dial up speeds. AND NO there are no other options where I live I get good enough phoone service for phone calls but only 1 bar  (2 sometimes) of LTE service. MY phone won't work at home on wifi. Sure there is the option of paying like 15 bucks a gig for "extra" but.....yeah.

Found this out when I accidentally deleted an app on my iphone and went to "restore" it and then noticed it needed updating at once after using synch. I'm also irritated as I also lost all my data with the app, (this has never happened before when i update phones). A game I've been playing for 3 plus years daily so that's a lot of built up data. I've had this phone for a while, do normal auto back up to my computer regularly, and in fact just did transfer purchases Friday night. I update everything on my phone at work.