How do I clear purchases that I no longer want

You can't. You used to be able to hide purchases you were no longer interested in, but you can't do that anymore, either.

Why do you say that, Kurt? I just checked, and I can still hide and unhide purchases. The Apps don't show the "x", but it is there, and if you click in the upper left-hand corner when hovering, it hides the app. iBooks and Music still show the "x".

Cheers,

GB

You can in OS X, but I was going by Doglover45's tag line device of iPhone 4S, iOS 5.1.1.

I know you couldn't do it in iOS 7. I had wanted to hide a bunch of apps I had downloaded to try, but couldn't find a way to remove them. Looking all over the forums at the time, the consensus was it couldn't be done.

However, checking just now, the feature to hide purchased items in the App Store is back in iOS 8 (yay!). Just touch the app you want to hide and slide your finger to the left. A red button named Hide will appear.

Wow! I didn't know you could do it from an iOS device at all! YAY all around 🙂

GB

Haha! 🙂 Now to figure out how to unhide them. I don't see an obvious way to get hidden items to show again.

Edit: Oh. Well, that's pretty dumb. I just tapped on a couple of the other tabs at the bottom (Featured, Updates, etc.). Then go back to the Purchased tab and every single item you just hid is back. What use is that?

That's where I think you will still need iTunes on a computer..... 😢

Just found it. I think when you "hide" it on your iOS device, it is basically doing the same thing as "deleting" the app. I hid a couple of apps on my iPhone 6, and they did not show up on my "hidden" apps info in iTunes on my Mac. But, when I went to Purchased on the device, and then clicked "Not on this Phone" they showed up there with the iCloud symbol. What do you think?

GB

That sounds right. Everything I hid had the iCloud symbol. Which of course are the ones I no longer want to see as I have no intention of ever downloading them again. But they all just pop back into view when I leave that tab and come back to it.