All my Apps have disappeared overnight ?????

This just happened to me too. Literally seconds between using it and the apps being gone. Looked away just for a moment and everything just vanished. I did a restore and things seem to be back to normal for now but I'm going to be really ticked off if it happens again.

I dropped the phone yesterday, I wonder if there's any correlation?

The same thing has happened to me twice over the last few weeks. Very annoying. Enough to make you want a droid!

I don't see how apps could just disappear without human intervention. Is your phone hacked or jailbroken?

Tamara, just read some of the messages left about this and some of the other strange behaviour reported by experienced users with the iOS4 updates. Some real problems are occurring without user interference.

I have been a heavy mac user since the early 90s and consider myself a bit of an Apple geek. But, yesterday I found that the system camera and application apps had disappeared from my iPhone 3GS which is neither hacked nor jail broken. Very strange. I know that I have not deleted them and no-one else uses my phone. I had also noticed last weekend that some purchased apps did not display the data previously saved with the app. All since updating to iOS4. No problems previously.

I was running iOS4.0.1 and noticed that 4.0.2 was available for update. I've just restored and updated to this and now I have none of my purchased apps, none of my music and still no camera or applications apps. All the other system apps are on the phone.

This is clearly a problem with iOS4. Another symptom of Apple having to rush release of software before its stable because 1. a drunk technician left his prototype in a bar and 2. because Android is gaining momentum.

Eventually there will be a stable release for iOS4. Meanwhile this is one user that's going back to iOS3 for user stability. Heck, I never early saw the advantage of multi-tasking anyway.

This same thing happened to me. I have not had my iPhone 3GS connected to a computer for a while, have not synced it, its not jailbroken or anything. Everything was there when I went to sleep last night, it was on a charging base, when I woke up all my 3rd party applications were gone, all of the apps that came with the iPhone from Apple were still there. Then I hooked it up to my iTunes to see what was going on and I saw what looked like the right file size information that should have been my applications listed as other on the iPhone storage, but I have no way to see them. Any solutions to this?

HI,

exactly the same error occurs here.
Also 3GS , OS 4.0.2, newest iTunes Version 9.2 on a windows vists system.
Never had problems before. Put a Backup from one to another iphone - everything is there. Apps, Savegames etc.
Now i only have the settings, Fotos, Contacts etc.
No Apps on the phone, no apps on itunes, no *.ipa files on the drive.
Also movies bought from itunes are missing.

Message was edited by: Telekoma

i have the ip4, everthing perfect up until 2 nights ago, i synced my apps then woke up the next morning and they were no longer there! same thing again last night. very frustrating.

Lawrence Vingoe wrote:
Tamara, just read some of the messages left about this and some of the other strange behaviour reported by experienced users with the iOS4 updates. Some real problems are occurring without user interference.

Real problems because 3 users (out of MILLIONS) are reporting issues with apps disappearing?

I have been a heavy mac user since the early 90s and consider myself a bit of an Apple geek. But, yesterday I found that the system camera and application apps had disappeared from my iPhone 3GS which is neither hacked nor jail broken. Very strange. I know that I have not deleted them and no-one else uses my phone. I had also noticed last weekend that some purchased apps did not display the data previously saved with the app. All since updating to iOS4. No problems previously.

I was running iOS4.0.1 and noticed that 4.0.2 was available for update. I've just restored and updated to this and now I have none of my purchased apps, none of my music and still no camera or applications apps. All the other system apps are on the phone.

This is clearly a problem with iOS4. Another symptom of Apple having to rush release of software before its stable because 1. a drunk technician left his prototype in a bar and 2. because Android is gaining momentum.

Apple did not rush release of iOS4 or the iPhone4 due to any such thing. The iPhone 4 and iOS4 were both released on schedule, just as 3.x and 2.x had been released in previous years. A self-proclaimed Apple geek really should not be so clueless about this.

Eventually there will be a stable release for iOS4. Meanwhile this is one user that's going back to iOS3 for user stability. Heck, I never early saw the advantage of multi-tasking anyway.

Have you looked at the postings for 3.x? 2.x? Every release has bugs. Some users experience them, some do not. Millions of users are not having issues with iOS4, yet you state it is not stable. Please enlighten us as to why it is not stable? I have never experienced the issue of apps disappearing. That honestly sounds more like a user issue, or someone playing a joke on a friend.

My apps have now disappeared overnight 3 nights in a row, becoming quite annoyed and can't find anything to help! Any ideas please? Iphone4 not connected to anything, works perfectly until I go to sleep, in the morning gone!! No one around to do it deliberately either!

chappers86 wrote:
My apps have now disappeared overnight 3 nights in a row, becoming quite annoyed and can't find anything to help! Any ideas please? Iphone4 not connected to anything, works perfectly until I go to sleep, in the morning gone!! No one around to do it deliberately either!

Have you tried restoring as new and then re-syncing all your contacts and apps?

Hi,
I am also experiencing these problems. Sometimes (1 to 2 times a day) when I unlock my phone all 3:rd party apps are gone. Usually I can just lock it again for a couple of minutes and the apps are back when I unlock again. Yesterday I did a full restore/reset and today the problems was still there which makes me think it's a bug in iOS. A couple of times the trick of locking/unlocking haven't worked so i had to do a sync with iTunes which reinstalled all 3:rd party apps and I lost all data from them. This was extremely irritating...

I have hear/read that you can go into Settings-->General-->Restrictions and enable and then disable restrictions to get back missing apps but this hasn't worked for me.

I have been dealing with this problem for over a month and a half now... I practically have accepted it as normal now. Every 3-6 days I will wake up to no 3rd party apps on my phone and will have to re-sync them but because it's such a hassle to select the ones I want, and the time I have to wait for it to sync them all, I only sync back the ones that I use daily; And because when the apps "disappear" of the screen, they still leave consumed space on my phone labeled as "other" and as that adds up, the less space I have for music and videos. I have already restored my iPhone once and will have to do it again soon to regain the free space.

You have corrupted data on your phone. The apps aren't actually disappearing, they are being corrupted.

Try restoring as a new phone without any apps. If everything works fine, add the apps back one at a time until the problem reappears. Once it reappears, you'll know which app is causing your issue.

I'm trying to take a deep breath before responding too forcefully, but it's becoming VERY frustrating that this error is not getting the attention it deserves. To Tamara and the hundreds of other repliers that write this off to corruption, an uncommon bug, or user error, it is ABSOLUTELY a problem with the update process when a new OS version is released. Absolutely, 100%, no-question-about-it, it happens when an OS update is installed on an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. I am a professional tech, and I have found no easy solution to this yet. And it has happened like clockwork with each of the v4x updates. Apple, a little help here, please? Clearly this is a real issue and not a fluke.

I realise it is annoying but the symptoms you are seeing do suggest corrupted data. If you cannot see any of your apps but the space for them is still showing as allocated, that's what it is. It can be fixed by restoring. I have no idea why this problem should happen everytime you do an update.