I thought I’d set up my iPhone to automatically download all my iTunes purchases, but it seems I have a lot missing. How do I check and fix my settings?
Actually, I recommend people be careful with their automatic download settings because it can consume a substantial amount of cellular data if you don’t have things set up properly. Purchase a movie on your computer and your phone might start downloading it even if you’re not on wifi. That’s why a lot of people disable this feature. But worse, it can also quickly consume all the space on your iPhone too if you aren’t careful.
Still, if you do have space and have things set up as you desire, it can be darn convenient to buy the latest song or TV episode on one device just to have it magically show up on all your other iTunes-connected devices!
To start, let’s have a quick peek at your Apple iPhone settings. Go into the Settings app and look for iTunes & App Store:
A tap on iTunes & App Store and all your settings are immediately obvious and rather surprisingly self-explanatory:
I would suggest that the most important setting here is Use Cellular Data. Notice you can also fine-tune what’s automatically downloaded on each device so you might have movies automatically download on your iPad, while apps only show up on your iPhone. Nice that you can fine-tune things.
Now that you have that set up properly, though, there’s still the question of older purchases. So let’s unravel that too.
Find the iTunes app on your iPhone 6s:
Tap on it and you’ll see a bunch of new content you can download as desired:
It’s rather poorly labeled, but what you want to tap on is “More”. You can see it, the three circles on the lower right corner.
Tap on it and you’ll see some additional options:
You can check your Downloads queue to see if anything is mid-download, but more likely you’ll find the missing content in the Purchased area, so tap on “Purchased”…
That’s looking promising!
Let’s have a quick peek at what Movies I’ve purchased from iTunes by tapping on “Movies“:
Here’s where it gets interesting. Look at the top bar: All and Not on This iPhone.
Cool. Tap on Not on This iPhone in the iTunes app on your iPhone:
Oops! Looks like I haven’t downloaded any of this content onto my iPhone. Space constraints!
Now you can back up and look at your music the same way, getting a list of what tracks aren’t yet downloaded:
Rather a lot of music, actually. Look at the line with Alan Silvestri. See the “13”? That means there are 13 tracks that are part of that iTunes purchase that aren’t on this particular iPhone.
To download any of it, zoom in one more by tapping on the track — or as I do, tap on Recent Purchases — and you’ll see the cloud and arrow icon:
That’s it. Go through and download what you want, and know that you’ve also changed and updated your settings to ensure that future purchases will also be automatically downloaded.
Now enjoy!
1. Surprisingly I have iPhone 6+. Except for iTunes & App Store Nothing else matches.
2. I Get Apple ID Password setting.
3. Music, Apps, Books,Music Update with only option -On/Off.
Automatically download new purchases (including free) made on other devices.
4. Use Mobile Data option- On/Off
uses mobile network for automatic downloads.
5. Suggested APPS
Installed Apps option- On/Off
Any suggestion appear on Lock screen and the apps switcher. Suggestions based on your Location and app usage
—————————————————-
It has left me more confused. Please clarify. V K Mahajan