Apple's pushing tons of app updates to the App Store, likely to fix app launching bug

Ipad Pro App Store Update Screen (Image credit: Oliver Haslam / iMore)

What you need to know

Last week some users were unable to launch iPhone and iPad apps.
Apple is now re-releasing a ton of App Store app updates.
It's likely this is to fix a bug somewhere.

There's a good chance you opened the App Store and were faced with lots of updates today, after Apple re-released many of them overnight. I found 32 apps awaiting updates on my iPhone and 16 on my iPad. Some reported seeing even more.

It isn't confirmed why this has happened but it's likely related to last week's issue that saw some people unable to open apps on iPhones and iPads. They received an error that claimed the app was no longer shared with them, suggesting some sort of authentication or signing error might have been afoot.

If that is indeed the case this re-releasing of updates makes sense. It's possible apps that were released within a certain timeframe were all affected – that might also explain why deleting and reinstalling the app also seemed to fix the issue for the majority of those affected.

Haven't ventured into the App Store yet today? It's probably worth waiting until you're on a decent Wi-Fi connection before you do!

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.