iTunes synced old deleted, unwanted apps to my iPhone

Bluewaves · Feb 3, 2012

Hi, iPhone newbie here. Been really enjoying it so far, but got one problem. I've searched around here and can't find a thread that exactly addresses this:

When I connected my iPhone to my PC for the first time, iTunes immediately launched and started syncing a bunch of apps FROM my PC TO my iPhone. All of these apps were old unwanted stuff that I had deleted off the phone in the last few weeks of owning it. Suddenly all that stuff was coming back, downloading to my phone, so I stopped it midstream. Then went to the Apps sync screen and found the "Sync Apps" choice and unchecked it. With that, I got a warning that said I'd lose all apps and data on the phone! Uh....why??

All I wanted to do was plug in my phone to charge it up, and maybe go into iTunes to see how much space I have left on the phone, and see if there are any OS updates for it. If I'd want to sync any apps, it would be FROM the phone TO my PC, not the other way around. Apparently iTunes remembered every download I'd ever made since I bought the phone, and tried to sync all of that stuff to the phone again. Seems pretty stupid and unintuitive to me, especially if when I tell it NOT to do that, I'm going to erase all apps and data on my phone! (What the...?)

How do I specify that what's on my iPhone (and what's NOT on there) takes precedence over the list of all the stuff that I've ever downloaded. I want changes made on my phone to sync UP to my PC. I don't want old crap remembered by iTunes on my PC to sync DOWN to my phone!

Or am I just totally confused about how this works?

Help, please..

Thanks

xrayeyes · Feb 3, 2012

Join the club. iTunes sucks.
I'm not going to get into all the ins and outs of syncing, because I still don't understand all of it myself. However there are a few things you can do first off.

Open iTunes without your phone connected. You may want to make sure wifi is off so that you don't connect over wifi.

Go under edit>preferences>devices> and check the box to not allow your devices to sync automatically.

Then as far as apps are concerned, you need to delete them from iTunes as well as your phone, otherwise they will always remain there. Make sure you have apps listed under your library on the left. Do not connect your phone. Click on apps under the library. When they all load, you can right click on the ones you want to delete and get rid of them that way.

As far as syncing...now that you have it set up to not sync automatically, when you connect your device and go under summary, you can uncheck all items you do not want to sync. Contacts, music, apps, etc.

Bluewaves · Feb 3, 2012

Thanks for that advice. I followed your instructions and now at least my iPhone won't sync automatically.
The app thing strikes me as really stupid, though. If I don't want an app on my iPhone anymore, I'll delete it straight from my iPhone, thank you very much. Then whatever is deleted THERE should be removed from the sync list in iTunes -- not the other way around. I don't want to keep deleting stuff in iTunes that I already killed on my phone, or have to go to iTunes on the PC, delete apps, then sync in order to get rid of an app on the phone. That's just lame, Apple.

Guess I'll just not sync apps at all, then. Thanks.

xrayeyes · Feb 3, 2012

You can still delete it off your phone, but in order to delete it for good it has to be done in iTunes. Maybe they consider it a safeguard in case you delete it by accident on your phone....