If you attempt to download Comic Zeal an an old device (which is presently listed in the App Store as requiring iOS 8.2 or above), you’ll get an installation error like the one we highlighted above. We’ll demonstrate the trick with the popular comic book reading app Comic Zeal. When an old iOS 5 device requests a new app from your library (rather than from the iTunes Store), it’ll search for an old, compatible version and–if one exists–grab it. Why? Because Apple’s policy is that if you purchased an app (this applies even to free “purchases”), that the app should be available to any device in your personal collection that requests to download it. However, if you purchase/download the current version of the application–on either a newer iOS device (like your iPhone 6) or using the iTunes desktop software on your Windows or Mac–then the older version of the application will be accessible to your older device. How to Download Old App Versions to Your Older DeviceĪs we noted above, if you fire up an old iPad using iOS 5 and try to download darn near anything from the App Store, iOS 5 is so ancient that installation will almost certainly fail for 99% of apps (even if that app is old enough to have an ancient iOS 5-era version). With that in mind, let’s take a look at how to stock up your aging iPad 1 with apps, frustration free. You can’t download an iOS 5 version of a six month old app that never had a version compatible with iOS 5. What they don’t tell you, though, is that you can easily (no jailbreak required) and legally (no piracy required) download old versions of applications to your older iOS devices with a pretty simple trick.īefore we walk you through that trick there is one minor and obvious caveat: the trick only works on apps that once had versions compatible with your OS. Search for an application in the App Store on your iPad 1, for example, and the App Store app will tell you that the app can’t be downloaded because it requires a device running iOS 7 (or 8, or 9), and therefore can’t be installed on your iPad…even if there was an iOS 5 version of the app at some point in the past. On the surface, this is a perfectly sensible thing for Apple to do: why would they ever want you to download older, buggier, and potentially less secure software when there’s an updated version available? When you’re on an older device, however, this means an app may not be compatible with your old version of iOS.
The way Apple has the App Store configured, you are always directed towards the newest version of an application.
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