Several years ago I bought anki for ios. I later deleted it on my phone. But now I want the app back. When I go to the apple store to redownload the app apple wants me to pay again. And when I go into my purchase history nothing shows up for the whole year in which I downloaded anki. When I reached out to apple they said there was nothing they could do, that this was an app specific problem and I should reach out to the developer. Help would be appreciated!
The regular way to reinstall AnkiMobile is through your Purchased apps – Reinstalling - AnkiMobile Manual . As long as you’re using the same Apple ID/account, that’s where you’ll find it.
But if it’s not showing up there, Apple Support is definitely who you should be talking to – View your purchase history for the App Store and other Apple media services - Apple Support . By their own policies, developers don’t have any access to Apple user accounts, so they know perfectly well we can’t help you with that.
If you’re not using the same Apple ID/account, that’s a separate problem, but you’ll need to deal with Apple Support about that too. Or you can use Family Sharing to share apps between your multiple Apple IDs.
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Another place to look for previously-purchased apps not on the phone is:
App Store app → profile icon in top right → Apps → My Apps → Not on this iPhone
If you previously purchased the AnkiMobile Flashcards app, then it should appear in that list with a cloud icon button next to it to re-download the app.
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Problem is it is not showing up there. Other than the charge on my bank statement there’s no proof I ever even had the app. I went back and forth with Apple for about an hour and they kept insisting that I must have used a different account. When I told them I have only ever had one Apple account they told me there must have been an app update or change that made whatever version I had no longer have a downloadable version in the App Store.
Sorry you are experiencing this App Store issue.
It seems that Apple is saying that, from their point of view, the purchase never took place. However, even under the best circumstances, even if you did have a receipt or transaction ID proving the purchase, there is nothing that app developers can do to fix these sorts of issues with the app store. Apple controls all aspects of the app store and how it works.
I also don’t think there is anything that app developers are capable of doing that would make purchase histories disappear, even for old apps that are removed from the app store. (For example, in my My Apps → Not on this iPhone list, I correctly see two older versions of an app that I purchased in 2017 and 2018. These old versions are no longer listed for purchase in the app store, but they still appear in my list of purchased apps as available for me to re-download.)
So, I don’t think that there is anything that the Anki developers did to cause the problem.
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