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Hands-On Apple 210: App Store Settings on iOS
00:15:38
Should You Enable Offload Unused Apps?
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- [00:01]
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Micah Sargent
And MLS 696891 coming up on Hands on Apple, let's take a look at another feature you might want to check out if you're having trouble keeping apps on your phone. Stay tuned.
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Chris Gethard
Podcasts you love from people you trust.
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Micah Sargent
This is twit.
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Welcome back to Hands on Apple. I am Micah Sargent and today, as I promised, I am taking a look at more of the issues that I actually hear about people experiencing the things that people are doing on their phones or their Macs or whatever Apple device they have. And they say, I can't figure out why this is working or why this is not working or what this does or how it does this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That is what we need to take a look at today. And the specific feature slash setting we're going to look at is, well, I'm keeping it a surprise because I'll tell you about the problem. So I had someone recently who was attempting to show me something in an app that they use. Okay? And so I went over, sat down, they started to pull out their phone, they started looking through, they tapped on the app. The app wasn't downloaded so we had to wait for the app to download. And then once the app was downloaded, then we were able to look through and see what exactly the person was trying to show me. But in talking to this person, I came to realize that they didn't know about a special little feature called offload unused apps. So they thought that this was a new setting or a new thing that had just been flipped on, didn't know how to turn it off. So we're going to take a look today at the settings regarding whether we keep apps on our phone or they are removed, how it works, what it is, et cetera, et cetera. So let's head over to to iOS and take a look. All right, here we are on iOS and the first thing that you're going to need to do is launch the settings app. And in this case, it used to be that you could just scroll down and you'd find App Store here. But due to changes across the globe, Apple has now moved the settings for the App Store as well as other Apple apps to the Apps section. So we'll tap on apps and settings and we are in the A's. So we just need to scroll down to App Store and tap on that. Now, because we're here, we might as well take a look at what these settings include. Just so you understand, before we get to the setting we're looking at specifically, first and foremost, just like any other app, you're going to have your permissions up at the top. The App Store is able to access my location while I'm using the app, not whenever I'm not using it. So if it's not, you know, front of mind and in action, then it won't use my location. It is able to add events to my calendar and that's all it can do. It cannot change events or delete events. It can only add events. That is because occasionally you'll have an app that launches, but doesn't fully launch in the App Store. And by that I mean it is sort of a preview, a pre download of an app. So this lets you add that to your calendar so you can stay apprised.
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Chris Gethard
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Micah Sargent
Anonymous Are you ready to grow in 2026? Let me tell you why Advertising on Twit is the way to make that happen. I'm Micah Sargent. I'm the host of Tech News Weekly and several other shows on the network. And if you've ever listened to our shows, then you know what makes what we do different. It's trust. When we introduce a new partner on the show, the audience knows we believe in what they offer because we're only taking on partners that will actually benefit our audience. And they know that when I'm waxing ecstatic about your product or service, I'm doing so with authenticity. Some other reasons why you should join the network? It's all about the numbers. 88%. That's the number of listeners who've made a purchase based on a twit ad. 90% those are the people who are involved in their company's tech and IT decisions. Oh, and by the way, 99% is the number of people who listen to most or all of the episode. Every host red ad we offer is authentic. It's unique, it's embedded permanently. So that means that your brand is going to get exposure even after your campaign concludes. Because yes, our nerds, our listeners, our viewers, they go back and check out the stuff we've done in the past. Every ad is simulcast across our serv social platforms. It's always available in both audio and video formats. So if you want your brand woven into conversations with tech experts and the world's most tech savvy audience, I mean, where else are you going to turn except right here at TWIT? So let's make 2026 your most substantial reach yet. Get in touch with us. Email PartnerWIT TV or visit TWiT TV. Advertisement Next is Apple Intelligence and Siri. These are all permissions related to whether Apple Intelligence can learn from your use of this app and whether Siri can also learn from your use of this app Search which says yes, I do or do not want this app to show up in my search, when I am looking for things notifications, you know what that is. It's all about whether this app can send you notifications and then cellular data. Does this app get to access your cellular data in order to download, upload, show, et cetera? Can it, does it only work on WI Fi or can it also work on your cellular network? Now this next section is incredibly important because it does have an impact on how apps are or are not downloaded to your device. In Automatic download section, the first one says app downloads. This allows for apps that you purchase or install on other devices. Your iPad, your Mac, if it is a cross platform universal app, your Apple TV in some cases, if you install those apps on those platforms, then they will show up here on your phone as well. It's a feature I absolutely abhor and therefore have it turned off. Because I don't want an app that I download on my iPad to necessarily be on my phone. If I want it there, then I'm going to choose to download it that way. So you'll see that I have it toggle off. But yes, this is the way to kind of keep your app experience the same across devices. The next is app updates. Now I have this turned off because I like to go in and see the new features that are added to apps so I can stay apprised of what's going on on. But this may be a feature that you keep turned on. It all depends on kind of what you're after. Because what this does is when new updates arrive for apps over the course of the next couple of weeks, those app updates will roll out to the apps on your phone. So it keeps you from having to go into the app Store tapping on your your icon in the top right corner and choosing to refresh the page to see if you have any app updates. The last section in Automatic Downloads is an interesting one. It's called In App Content and what is basically when you download a new app, it could be a game. The games are particular for this category, a game or some other app. And you then go on to do something else while you are doing another thing. An app can in the background go ahead and download some of the stuff that you are trying to get to your device. So a lot of times if you get a big game on the app Store and you download it to your app, but to your iPhone, you'd go to launch the game and annoyingly it would tell you that it needs to spend the next hour downloading, you know, 2.4 gigabytes right of data and so you have to wait for it. This just kind of smooths that process a little bit and makes it possible for you to not have to keep track of when and how your data is being downloaded. When it comes to again, these third party apps, the next section is cellular data. So this is more about using cellular data. We've already given it permission to use cel cellular data. On my phone. This says when you are using cellular data, I'm okay for you doing automatic downloads with cellular data. So that means that any of the automatic stuff that I have like in app content which I have turned on, I do not have app updates or app downloads turned on. So it's not going to in the background, use cellular data without my permission. Then you can say when it comes to apps that you download from the App Store, if the file is over 200 meg, this is saying I need you to ask. So what happens is if I were to go into the App Store, find an app, probably a game that I download, and it's bigger than 200 megabytes, I'll get a prompt that says, hey, you're connected to cellular data right now. Are you sure you want to download this app? I say, yes, and we move on from there. You can change that to always ask. So that doesn't matter the size always allow. So you again, it doesn't matter the size, but it works the opposite way where it will not ask you. Or again, that 200 megabyte limit. The next one is video aud play. What this does is when you're in the App Store and you tap on an app and the developer has added a video to their App Store page, it will play that video for you. So it's not a requirement. And for some people, because it does use up a little bit of data, or because it's just annoying to see a video playing when you haven't necessarily tapped to have it play. That's what that setting lets you change. Next, in app ratings and reviews, what this does is it turns on or off the prompts that developers can send you within an app to ask you to rate or review their app. So if you are bothered by those prompts that pop up that say, hey, could you rate this? This is a way to turn that off. You'll notice I have mine turned on. I think it's very important to, to support developers. And one of the big things that people often don't know about apps, the App Store is that every time a new update for an app comes out, reviews have to be done again. So if you have the, you know, latest version of an app, you're probably going to get another prompt asking you, hey, would you please rate and review this? That's because the App Store treats it as if it is a new version. Whenever it comes to those ratings, reviews obviously will stick around for a long time. The next section, this is the section that we were talking about is Offload unused Apps. And you'll notice that I have mine turned off. Now, when it comes to offload unused apps, it's important to understand what's happening here because there are two portions of an app. There is the app itself, the stuff that the developer has made. That is the code for your, let's say, your, your text editor that you've installed. You've installed TextApp fun. And so you have the app, Text App Fun. The developer somewhere types it up, makes it into an app, puts it in the App Store. You download it. Text App Fun is the app, it has its own set of data. Then you also have the.
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The part of the app that is what you are adding. Okay, so in this case, you have the part of the app that is.
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Your files that you've created for this text editor. When you choose to offload unused apps, it disappears the app content, the stuff that the developer made, and leaves your data and your documents in place. Okay, so it's not removing your stuff that you've added. It is simply removing the app itself. And it does this after a period of time. Now, you'll notice that Apple says automatically remove unused apps. There's no exact date at which an app becomes an unused app. Well, in the background, it's. There is an exact thing, but it's based on your usage, how often you know you're launching that app or when you're coming across that app, et cetera, et cetera. It's. It's been my experience that for the most part, when I have had this turned on, these are apps that I'm not using regularly. But because one or two times I have gone in and had it be. Have the app be gone, it has been a little annoying. And I've got the space for it. So I like to keep mine turned off to keep those apps on my phone. So this was what I had to teach the person about this offload unused apps section in order for the person to toggle this off so that the apps stayed on their phone even when they weren't using those apps for a while. Now, again, it could be for you that you're okay with getting rid of the app because it's just not something that you regularly use and the system seems to detect it properly, in which case you're good to go. Keep this turned on and you're saving space on your device. Lastly, I'll mention these next sections. It's all about privacy. When you tap see how your data is managed. This tells you a little bit about Apple's commitment to privacy, how your data is used in relation to the App Store. The Personalized Recommendations section gives you a little bit of information about what data specifically is collected and used about you to inform what apps are recommended to you personally. And so tapping on that will take you to a page that shows you your subscriptions, your past purchases, and all of the other information that is involved in determining what apps it thinks you might like. The last part is the Reset Identifier option. There is an identifier that is created for you that Apple uses to understand your behavior and track that behavior in the App Store. So I have some, you know, random string of characters that is representative of me, of the apps that I go and download, of the reviews that I make, of the ratings that I make, et cetera, et cetera. What this does is it says, okay, great, you have had this information. I am done being tracked. Like, I want that to stop and I want you to treat me as a completely new person. So you can hit Reset identifier and you'll get a new identifier that then Apple uses for this behavior. So that is what you do with that section. But again, the main part of this was all about offloading unused apps and enabling or disabling that feature. Folks, as I promised, I'm trying to do the very practical questions and answers that you might have, the troubleshooting steps you need to take when it comes to your phone, your Mac, your iPhone, iPad, and all of your other Apple devices. If you have questions for me, micahwit tv, you can also reach me HOA tv. All of those places will make their way to me. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I'll catch you again for another episode of Hands on Apple next week.
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