How do I find out what I accidently deleted?

[JonH]

iPhone 6. When I pulled the phone out of my pocket the home screen apps were dancing and asking me to confirm deletion of an app. I rejected that and now see an empty spot on my screen. Apparently I accidentally deleted an app but I do not know what it was that was deleted.

I'd like to know if it's possible to determine what app I may have deleted. My most recent backup is 6 or 8 weeks old and I hesitate to simply restore since I don't have much experience with Apple products. I'm afraid restore from backup will change existing data when all I need to do is recover a missing app. It would be simple if I knew what app that was.

 

[rasmith1959]

iPhone 6. When I pulled the phone out of my pocket the home screen apps were dancing and asking me to confirm deletion of an app. I rejected that and now see an empty spot on my screen. Apparently I accidentally deleted an app but I do not know what it was that was deleted.

I'd like to know if it's possible to determine what app I may have deleted. My most recent backup is 6 or 8 weeks old and I hesitate to simply restore since I don't have much experience with Apple products. I'm afraid restore from backup will change existing data when all I need to do is recover a missing app. It would be simple if I knew what app that was.

You could look at your purchase history in the App Store and figure out what is missing. Just tap on the App Store icon, then tap on updates at the bottom, then on the updates page tap on purchases.

One in purchases you can hide what's on your iPhone by tapping "Not on this iPhone"

Sent from my iPad Air using Tapatalk

 

[JonH]

RASmith:

Thanks so much for the reply and especially the excellent roadmap on how to do this. I had thought of checking purchases although I did not do it because I have deleted a number of purchased apps that I found not useful or just unused. However, perhaps doing what you said will jog my memory as to which app I deleted.

 

[xrayeyes]

If you use iTunes, the app would still show up there. compare your phone to the list on iTunes.

 

[JonH]

RASmith:
On first reading, I missed your comment about "not on this iPhone" in purchased apps. That is the key that helped me.

xrayeyes:
I initially went to iTunes before posting here but I am not proficient in iTunes and I did not see an obvious solution. I feared that iTunes would overwrite older data during sync and that I would not be able to figure out what was lost.

 

[xrayeyes]

I understand your concern! iTunes does is not always user friendly. One thing you can do to prevent accidental syncing is to go into your preferences and change the setting. iTunes>Preferences>Devices>check the box to "prevent devices from syncing automatically".

If you are in iTunes, you can look at the apps in your summary area once your iPhone connects to iTunes. They won't sync unless you tell them to, if you do the above procedure I described.

Glad you found the solution to your problem though!

 

[JonH]

Yes, I found the sync automatically when I first went into iTunes, and at that time unchecked it, but it was too late. I was hoping that I could determine the missing app by looking at the images of the screen that is there but I guess that is the current screen, not a saved screen. I need to figure out how to make captures of my 3 screens and save them for future reference.

 

[scifan57]

Just make screenshots of all your home screens and save them somewhere other than your iPhone.

 

[steponeman]

try to see on your icloud if your iPhone is connected to it, i think you can recover all what you have deleted from your iPhone from there

 

[J. A.]

try to see on your icloud if your iPhone is connected to it, i think you can recover all what you have deleted from your iPhone from there

Getting back an app that way is only possible when you erase everything before. Then you're able to restore from an iCloud backup where this app still was on one of the homescreens.