Here’s How to Get the App Store Back in iTunes

Woman happy with iTunes on the Mac

Let’s say you need to deploy iPhone and iPad apps in your business—or maybe you just want to be able to manage apps on your own devices and make App Store purchases, which you can’t do in iTunes 12.7. Turns out Apple quietly gave us a fix for that, but didn’t bother to do much to let anyone know.

Woman happy with iTunes on the Mac
iTunes 12.6.3 brings the App Store back

If you’re running iOS 11 on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you need iTunes 12.7 for compatibility. The problem, at least for some people, is that iTunes 12.7 removes the ability to manage apps or view the App Store on your computer.

That’s a big problem for a lot of people, especially if you need to deploy custom apps in your organization or use the Volume Purchase Program. The fix is iTues 12.6.3, which is available for the Mac, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions for Windows users.

You’ll need to visit Apple’s “Deploy apps in a business environment with iTunes” Knowledge Base article to find iTunes 12.6.3. Or, if you aren’t up for an extra click or two, go ahead and grab the installers for Mac, 32-bit Windows, and 64-bit Windows without visiting the KB article first.

You can install iTunes 12.6.3 over iTunes 12.7, but once you do you won’t get notifications for future iTunes updates. If you decide you want to get back on track with the regular iTunes builds you’ll have to download and install the latest version from Apple’s website.

5 thoughts on “Here’s How to Get the App Store Back in iTunes

  • You also need to revert your iTunes library (specifically the “.itl” file) to a pre-update version. The 12.6.3 version won’t read a library that has been touched by 12.7

    1. Your correct, I can’t do anything since I reverted to 12.6.3! Where is this “.iti” file and how do I use it to open the iTunes.
      I want to go back to 12.7. If I understand correctly, then I can go to the App store and get the new update from 12.6.3 to 12.7
      I guess I’m to old 70+ to mess with stuff.

  • Great tip, thank you, but I’m with Lee: I would really rather not have to ‘fix’ so much after an update, Apple. Does anyone in Cupertino have any connection to their users whatsoever anymore? Apart from profit, their bragging rights are getting pretty thin. :/

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