Can I delete my apps from my hard drive now that I have iCloud?

If you delete apps from your hardrive, you would have to stop syncing with iTunes alltogether to keep your apps on your phone.

Well, as you found out, iCloud is not a backup storage.

If you need to clear some space on your hard drive, the best thing is to an external hard drive and move your space hogging files - usually movies, videos, pics, music to an external drive. Once you check that everything has been copied properly and works, you can delete them on your internal drive - don't forget to empty the trash.

iCloud only backs up the information on the apps, it doesn't back up the apps themselves. Basically iCloud keeps a blueprint of the apps you have installed on your phone at the time of a backup. If you ever need to restore from iCloud you will end up just downloading the app again, not installing them from the restore. Hope that makes sense how that works.

No offense taken.

To understand better, after you delete the app on your computer, are you syncing your iPhone/iPad or does it just delete itself automatically?

Why make the app delete in 2 places when I still want to keep it in one??

I'm certainly no expert here, but the way I read it is: it's an all or nothing situation; since it is automatic and therefore not user controllable (that I know of), it's either present on all or none.

lukefromredlands wrote:

The apps disappear after I sync, yes. I don't want to avoid syncing, but I also don't want to loose apps (while at the same time wanting to free up hard drive space on my Mac Mini). I know how to save my music library on an external hard drive and still access them in the iTunes library... Can that be done with apps? If so, how?

The easiest way to use an external drive for iTunes...

1. Quit iTunes.
2. Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external.
3. Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choosse library and select the iTunes folder you copied to the external.

That's it.

You can then delete /Music/iTunes/ folder on the internal, freeing up that space.

I think the point is (or at least for me) that, in this case, the OP is using a laptop and may want to listen to his/her music etc on the laptop without having to cary around an external drive.

However, the **apps** on the laptop are excess and not needed (already on the iPad/iPhone, and re-downloadable from iCloud). The OP wants to delete them (the core app files) to free up space.

How do you do this without crippling the rest of iTunes (i.e. without having to cary around an external drive) ... ?

Unless I'm missing something here: the OP is using a Mac Mini, not a laptop.

And, if you move your iTunes library/folder to an external, you can then safely delete it from your machine.

Ahhh, you're right. I'm confusing threads. Sorry.

The basic underling question remains the same though: if my app information is backed up in iCloud, why do i need a local copy (if i don't want one)? For people with laptops (and limited disk space) this is a key question (and fundamentally the one the OP was asking). I currently have over 50Gb of apps in the Mobile Applications directory.

Since it's a laptop for me i don't want the rest of my iTunes library on an external drive that i would then have to carry around.

Well, iCloud is so very new and only some features are working directly with iOS devices, so I don't have an answer for you; and, as I would not trust any online server to keep my information safe, I would not take advantage of any cloud service - I prefer knowing it is safe on several external hard drives under my control.

"I would not take advantage of any cloud service"

Not even with backups you make yourself?

" - I prefer knowing it is safe on several external hard drives under my control."

Note that apps are not uploaded to iCloud. They are simply available for redownload.