Apple's iOS 11 comes out this week, but with it, you may find many of your apps disappear. Here's how to prepare.
The great 32-bit cull is on its way. Apple has made app developers aware for three years they should recompile and re-publish their apps as 64-bit builds. Apple has made iPhone and iPad users similarly aware 32-bit apps are on the way out, progressively making the alerts scarier.
App developers were told to prepare as far back as December 2014. With the release of iOS 9 in June 2015, opening a 32-bit app on your iDevice warned the app could slow down your device. As of iOS 10.3 the warning is more direct, saying the app will not work with future versions of iOS and the publisher needs to update it.
Well, the future version of iOS is coming this week. In Australia, it's 3am on 20 September. Of course, you're not compelled to upgrade, but I'm certainly personally excited by the new app dock for iPads, as well as the Files app giving — for the first time ever — some semblance of a file system for iOS, among many, many other things: drag-and-drop, screenshot editing, all sorts of tremendous improvements.
{loadposition david08}Yet, when you upgrade, you'll most certainly find you have much more storage space free on your device than you remembered – because a whole bunch of apps have disappeared. It's the great 32-bit app cull, and it's coming.
You can take actions to prepare. Apple don't make it super-easy, but you can find all the 32-bit apps you have via Settings / General / About / Applications. Here, your iOS 10 device will list all the 32-bit apps you have installed, telling you directly they will not work with iOS 11 unless they are updated.
If you don't regularly update your apps, be sure to open the App Store and click Updates right now! Get your apps up-to-date. That won't fix them all, but any which have a 64-bit release will no longer be at risk of removal.
However, the unfortunate reality is most of the 32-bit apps you have simply do not have any updates. The developer has abandoned them, moved on, gone out of business, or has some other reason why they've never recompiled their work of art as a 64-bit app in the almost three years since Apple first told them to do so.
Some of the apps will be a surprise – once popular, top-ranking classics like Trainyard, Peggle Classic, Flight Control HD, Tower Madness, Cut the Rope, Animalia, Modern Conflict and more are all there. In some cases they're not even available on the App Store anymore. In other cases, they sit there, with a "last updated" date years prior.
However, knowing is half the battle. Now you can see all your 32-bit apps, the ones at risk of removal, you can take action.
Review the list. Are there any apps there you just don't care about anymore? Just ignore them then.
Are there apps you really do care about? Search for them on the App Store and see if there's a new release. One of my old 32-bit apps was Shazam for iPad, which is no longer available, and logically, no longer supported, because Shazam was re-released as a universal app for both iPhone and iPad some time ago. I can thus get better functionality by downloading the new app and removing the old one. That's one problem sorted.
Similarly, there may be new releases of many other old apps from the same vendor, giving you new and improved functionality without losing the things you care about.
In other cases, the developer hasn't done anything new, but knowing the app will go away you now have the chance to find something else which serves the same purpose. In my case, I had old networking utilities like DNS lookup tools which have not been updated in years, but where I can easily find a replacement from a different publisher to do the same thing.
Thus my advice to you is go into Settings / General / About / Applications and work through this list. Upgrade what you can, replace what you can, and ignore (or delete) what you no longer care about.
Fortunately, the great 32-bit app cull need not be a shock or surprise; you now have the opportunity to take control before it happens.