(There’s one exception to all this: if you have apps that still work in the version of iOS running on your device and the app is no longer available from the App Store for download. High Sierra should be able to search by type using kind:ipa, but on my system this produced no matches despite the existence of IPA files in indexed locations.Ĭheck that you aren’t storing your iTunes folder elsewhere, as IPA files may linger there. If you use iTunes > Preferences > Advanced to change the location of your iTunes library, it’s possible you’ll have IPA files in two or more locations.
On my system, I found them in ~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications, where there were both IPA files and a Downloads folder full of what appeared to be ancillary apps called download.app. ipa extension, and Apple identifies their kind in the Finder as “iOS app.” You should be able to find them in the iTunes media folder. Other readers report finding tens or even hundreds of gigabytes of such files! I found 5GB of iOS apps on one computer and 26GB on another, even though I haven’t synced an iOS device to either in years. iTunes has never had great features for managing iOS apps stored on your Mac, and iTunes 12.7 didn’t help you take any action with those stored files, either. ITunes 12.7 no longer syncs iOS apps to iOS devices, something it’s done since the beginning of the App Store. iTunes will never rely on them to sync back to your iOS device. But one thing I noted in passing continues to come up: several readers have asked if they can really, really dump the iOS application files that iTunes retained after the upgrade.
We ran a guide, “ iTunes 12.7: How to cope with the abrupt changes,” which answered most of your questions. When Apple updated iTunes to version 12.7, it overhauled the iOS/iTunes interaction.