How to Transfer iPhone iPad Purchases to iTunes on Computer

You can download and purchase apps/songs directly from iTunes Store on your iOS device (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch). If you stored some purchased Apps and Music on your iPhone, you may want to backup these purchased items to iTunes on your computer for protecting.

In this post, we offer two ways to backup iPhone/iPad purchases to iTunes. One is the default feature of iTunes, and another is one transfer tool, which you can use to transfer more than purchased songs and apps to your iTunes or computer directly. Now let’s start.

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Part 1. How to Transfer iPhone/iPad Purchases to iTunes – Basic

Step 1. Authorize Your Computer

Before transferring iPhone purchases to iTunes (If it is the first time you connect the device with computer), firstly you need to authorize the computer. To do so:

Open iTunes > Store > Authorize This Computer > See a dialog box and Enter your Apple ID and password > click the Authorize button

Note: It will be a little more complicated if your iPhone purchases were bought with several accounts, because you will need to authorize the computer for each one.

Step 2: Transfer iPhone iPad Purchases to iTunes

Connect your device to the computer and its icon appears in iTunes. On menu bar, click Files > Devices > Transfer Purchases from "Your iOS device name".

Part 2. How to Transfer All Songs/Apps to iTunes – AnyTrans

Recently, after updating to new version of iOS, such as iOS 9.1, some iPhone uses found that they couldn’t transfer purchases from their iPhone to iTunes, and the error messages shows "There are purchased items on the iPhone that have not been transferred to your iTunes libaray". In this situation, you may need some alternative way to help you transferring data from iPhone or iPad to your iTunes on your computer. And below we show you how to use AnyTrans – one of perfect iPhone/iPad transfer tools - to easily make it.

Step 1. Download AnyTrans, install and run it on your computer. Connect your iOS device to computer by using USB cable. Click "Content to iTunes" icon.

Step 2. Select "Music" and "Apps" and transfer them to iTunes. (Notice that app transferring function now is available only in iOS 8.2 and the version before iOS 8.2.)

The Bottom Line

To avoid data loss, you are suggested to frequently backup purchased items and important info on your iPhone/iPad with iTunes or iCloud. And you can also use AnyTrans to backup your iPhone/iPad by transferring specific data to computer, or to another device, such as transferring messages from one iPhone to another. Welcome any comments to talk about how to backup purchases on iPhone/iPad on the below comment box.