iTunes Mobile Applications Folder is Huge & Not Updated

Some time ago, I moved my iTunes folder to an external drive.

Now I have two 'Mobile Applications' folders. One in the internal drive with 222 items taking up 5.6GB, and one on the external drive with 180 items taking up 8.6 GB. The external folder was last modified Feb 2016, while the internal drive folder was last modified 2015.

So it appears that neither are being used, even though I backup my iPhone to my computer and the hard drive.

So which can I delete? Or both? And where are my backups going?

Posted on Sep 30, 2019 6:04 PM

Top-ranking reply

chuck_3rd

Community Specialist

Posted on Oct 2, 2019 8:11 PM

Hey there Lawrence Hammer,

Thanks for reaching out in Apple Support Communities. I understand you have a large amount of storage dedicated to Mobile Applications. I’ll be happy to help with this.

Mobile Applications are apps that are used on iOS devices. You used to be able to download these on a computer with iTunes and sync them to your devices. Now apps and games are only downloaded through the App Store and iTunes is no longer used for this. You can read more about this here:

Download apps and games from the App Store

This means you can remove these folders from your storage. These apps are not included in iOS backups and you cannot sync them from iTunes to your iPhone. To see what’s included in an iOS backup, please review this article:

About backups for iOS devices

To help you find out where your iOS backups are located, you can use this link:

Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Cheers

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iTunes Mobile Applications Folder is Huge & Not Updated

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