How to Restore Your Lost Apps after Upgrading to iOS 5

If you are anyone like me who have lost all your old apps while upgrading to iOS 5 then you should be reading this post. So the scenario is, you had like 50-100 apps in your iPhone and you see few or none of them got transfered after the upgrade. If you have tried to restore from backup and no luck on that either, then don't worry you have landed in right place. Read below step by step process to get back all your purchased apps.

Step 1: Open the iTunes from your desktop and click on "Purchased" link.

Step 2: In this window in the right hand side top you would see two tabs that reads "All" and "Not in my Library". "All" tab shows you all the purchases you have made so far and "Not in my Library" tab shows Apps that are not there in your library and which you can download from iCloud. And in that tab if you see a small "cloud" symbol against a app that would mean you can download that app from iCloud and sync to your iPhone. Unfortunately you would NOT see the cloud symbol for all the apps eventhough that is not there in your iPhone. Aim is to get that cloud symbol on all the apps so that you would be able to download them again.

Step 3: Click on "Apps" tab in your iTunes left hand bar. You would see all your purchased apps which are there in your library already, though you are not able to sync them back to your iPhone. The Apps that are greyed out means they are not found in your local computer hence iTunes is not able to sync them back to iPhone. Now don't worry as iCloud has them all, its just that we need to be able to download those apps from iCloud.

Step 4: Remove the "App" from your library that is greyed out and that you are not able to sync with iTunes.

Step 5: Click on "Purchased" link again and go to "Not in my library" tab. The App you deleted from you library would appear here with the cloud symbol. Click on download and once download completed sync to your iPhone and enjoy your old App.