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Downloading apps stuck on waiting...

For the past few days I've been unable to download any apps from the App Store on my iOS devices, including the iPad and iPhone. I click "install", it asks for my password, it goes back to the home screen and the icon pops up and it says "waiting…" underneath, and then nothing ever happens. It's just stuck on waiting forever. It's basically what you would expect would happen if the store was down or my internet was down, except neither is the case.


I called Apple support and the only thing they had to offer was to do a factory reset on both my iPad and iPhone. I'd rather not do that because it's a pain. Plus, how can it be a hardware problem when it's happening on BOTH of my devices? It sounds like a problem with my account on their end, but they had no idea.


Has this happened anybody else? Anybody have any ideas?


For the record, I can still download apps onto my computer in iTunes and then sync those apps to my devices, I just can't download apps directly from my devices. Very strange.


Thanks for any help you guys can offer! =)


Philip

iPad (3rd gen) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iOS 5.1.1

Posted on Jul 2, 2012 12:59 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jul 2, 2012 1:07 PM

I fixed it from another post: go into iTunes -> more -> downloads and look for stuck downloads there. It's non-obvious, but it's also not difficult. Delete all the downloads in progress in iTunes and then try downloading apps again.


I guess if you have one download stuck anywhere, it screws up all downloads everywhere.


Anyway, worked for me. Whew.

141 replies

Aug 18, 2013 8:06 PM in response to stedwick

I have tried everything in this post, and nothing is working for my 2 apps that are frozen in "Installing". I have had this iPad mini for les than 2 weeks and had this problem twice now. The first time I did a factory reset and got rid of everything. I am trying to avoid it this time.


This morning my husband tried to download 2 apps via WiFi at Home Depot and it is stuck again. I tried to download them again connected to the computer/iTunes and it switched to being stuck on "Installing" now. And occasionally I can hold down the installing app in "Purchases" in the App Store and it will open the app. But it still won't open clicking the icon and it still says Installing.

I about ready to send it back and call it defective. NO websites offer anything that will help.
I can't hold down the app and delete it - no "x" appears.
Clicking it once to unpause it doesn't work. Clicking it twice doesn't work either.
Logging out of iTunes and then holding down home/power buttons to reset doesn't work.
The apps do not show in updates.
I can install and uninstall them from iTunes on the computer, but they always show "Installing" on the iPad, no change.

Help please?

Aug 23, 2013 5:42 AM in response to BNHWin

I'm having the same problem with one app... stuck at "installing" and none of the remedies work. I was hoping an update to the app might help... an update was just issued, but applying the update (via iTunes sync to my Mac) doesn't do anything. I have a lot of content on my iPad so I would rather not do a reset/restore. Fortunately this is a non-essential app for me, so I'm going to be patient for a few weeks and upgrade to IOS 7 to see if it handles this case better than IOS 6. If not, I'm going to open a case with Apple.

Nov 3, 2013 9:29 AM in response to NewUserOfIPHONE

A full shutdown solved the problem for me.

Hold down power button and home button at the same time, until iPhone turns off. This is supposed to be equivalent to removing the battery, according to Verizon.

I waited a out 30 seconds, the turned iPhone back on. Apps stuck in loading cleared from screens and the updated versions were still loaded on iPhone.

Nov 21, 2013 7:29 AM in response to stedwick

I'm amazed at the fact that apple requires people to go use iTunes in order to delete pending downloads. I have iOS 7 on my iphone 5 and I am completely unable to delete a pending multi-gig movie download. Pretty ridiculous. Just to show how much they care about support, you will also find it funny that if you run spell check on your posting to this community, the words iTunes, iOS, iPhone, etc... are not even in the spelling dictionary. LOL!

Downloading apps stuck on waiting...

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