I have several older apps that are no longer offered in the app store. I am considering upgrading to iOS 11, but I am concerned that I will be unable to recover those apps should they be deleted from my iPhone (or should I lose it).
Many of these apps, of course, are not 64-bit compatible, and therefore will never run under iOS 11 or later anyway. But of course apps vanish from the app store all the time, and I'm wondering whether the massive archive of iOS apps I have sitting on my hard drive becomes useless when I upgrade to iOS 11.
I realize that iTunes 12.7 removes this capability, but I was hoping that I could just stay with 12.6, or, ideally, open 12.6 when I needed, even though 12.7 is installed.
So my question is: Is it possible to use iTunes 12.6 to load apps from my hard drive onto an iOS 11 device?
Best Answer
There’s no need to specifically use iTunes v12.6 if all you want is to copy the iOS apps that you already have on your Mac to an iOS device: Apple’s support articles suggest this can still be done with iTunes v12.7. However, do keep in mind this only goes for the iOS apps you currently have on your Mac, it is not possible anymore to download other apps using the new iTunes.
According to the Apple Support article “Changes in the new iTunes”, you can still copy any of the apps that you have in your iTunes Media folder to an iOS device:
That last sentence links to another article that provides more detail: