Blank apps and icons for cellular data usage

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Level 1

86 points

Blank apps and icons for cellular data usage

Under Settings > Cellular, in the "Use cellular data for" list, the first two rows are for a couple of unknown apps, missing both title and icons. I assume they are remnants of apps I deleted but I am concerned they may be malware or some other bug. I have tried resetting my phone and made sure it was sync properly with my apps on my mac, but these missing apps are still there (see photo). Any suggestion on what these blank apps may be, and whether I should turn off cellular usage just in case? Thanks.

iPhone 5, iOS 9.2.1

Posted on Feb 12, 2016 5:10 PM

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Answer 1

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Demo

Level 10

166,494 points

Feb 12, 2016 6:07 PM in response to S. G.

It's not malware. I think your guess about it being the remnants of apps that you might have deleted would be closer to what happened. I have seen the same thing on all of my iOS devices. That icon is the "framework" that all app icons are built on. In other words, if you stripped the face of the app icon, you would see that frame.

It is not going to hurt to turn off cellular data for those apps. It might even lead a discovery as to which apps they are, if you try to use them with cellular data off and they don't work. I just think that they are icons that are not rendered properly.

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Answer 2

S. G. Author

Level 1

86 points

Mar 9, 2016 8:56 AM in response to Demo

Update: I realized that there are actually 4 ghost apps on my iPhone, when looking at the list of apps in Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Storage > Manage Storage.

These apps have no icon or name, but they have the following info:

- Version 2.4.6, app size 45.3 MB

- Version 1.1.2, app size 25.1 MB

- Version 1.1.1, app size 12.2 MB

- Version 2.7, app size: 5.6 MB

Each app gives me the option to delete it under these settings. Unfortunately, while they disappear momentarily from the list, as soon as I reload the Manage Storage page, they come back, even after deletion.

It's fortunate they are not taking too much space but it is annoying to know that something is always there in the background. I am wondering if it has anything to do with the daily crashes I experience when updating other apps (as soon as the update is larger than 100MB, a crash is guaranteed on my iPhone 5 - I assume it was related to internal memory shortage).

Any further help would be great! Thanks.

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Answer 3

S. G. Author

Level 1

86 points

Mar 9, 2016 1:07 PM in response to S. G.

I figured it out by trial and error:

I went to the App Store app, in the Updates tab, under "Purchased" next to the arrow, and looked for apps that were not on my iPhone but that had matching versions to the ones missing icons/names. I downloaded these previously deleted apps from the cloud again, and it did the trick: ghost apps were no longer there in the "manage storage" list.

It was not easy, because several apps had similar version numbers. Also, deleting these apps again by long press and tapping x led in some cases to the ghosts reappearing. The best way to delete these unwanted apps is to do it through the Manage Storage page.

At last, I got rid of the ghost apps!

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Answer 4

Demo

Level 10

166,494 points

Mar 9, 2016 5:21 PM in response to S. G.

Excellent work. Thanks for sharing the solution. Hopefully it will help someone else in the future.

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Answer 5

Ammy42

Level 1

4 points

Jul 7, 2016 8:03 PM in response to S. G.

I got this problem too .. It was because of some undeleted data remanent of the app ... But i fig that it can be solved Just go to app store > purchased . Then half download (0-1)% of the apps . A frame will appear with other apps . Go to settings >general>storage and icloud usage>manage storage. . Then delete all the empty frameworks PROBLEM SOLVED It did work for me

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