Q: How do I delete unwanted apps from iCloud ? I have an iPhone 5.
– June
A: Your applications themselves are not stored in iCloud, but only on your device and in your iTunes library. Some applications will store their data in iCloud, but this is usually optional and does not apply to every application.
The iTunes Store does maintain a list of all of the apps that you have previously purchased or downloaded so that you can re-download them into iTunes or directly onto your device, but these do not take up any storage in your iCloud account—it’s basically just a purchase history linked to the actual apps on the App Store.
In fact, if an application is removed from the App Store for whatever reason, it will also disappear from this purchased apps list. This is accessed either from the “Purchases” section found in the App Store on your iPhone or in the iTunes Store in your iTunes application on your Mac or PC.
If there’s an app in your purchase history that you don’t want to see on this list, you can “hide” it by going into your Purchase history in iTunes, hovering over the app that you want to hide, and clicking the small “X” that appears in the top-left corner.
Keep in mind that this will only hide the application from your purchase history listing—it does not “remove” it permanently from your account, and if you access the application directly in iTunes or the App Store, it will still show as being previously purchased/downloaded, with an “Install” button shown beside it.
You can find a list of purchased/downloaded items that you’ve previously hidden by going into your iTunes Store account preferences in iTunes and selecting the “View Hidden Purchases” link under the iTunes in the Cloud section.
This will bring up a Hidden Purchases screen similar to the Purchased view, with only those items that have been hidden displayed, and options to unhide items rather than downloading them.
If you have an app that stores its data in iCloud and want to remove that data from your device and your iCloud account, you can do this by going into the Settings app and selecting iCloud, Storage and Backup and then the Manage Storage option.
This will show a list of your device backups and applications currently storing data in iCloud and you can remove the data for individual applications from here.
