It's never a bad time to re-evaluate your App Store subscriptions

Subscriptions on iPhone
Subscriptions on iPhone (Image credit: iMore)

If you're anything like me you probably have way more app and service subscriptions than you know you do. It happens. We accumulate these things over time and while that's fine so long as we use them, it's less ideal if we find ourselves paying for services we no longer need or use. It's never a bad time to re-evaluate your App Store subscriptions.

Canceling Apple Arcade and other services like Apple TV+ are easy wins when you're looking to save a few dollars every month. The same goes for all of those apps that you started free trials for and then spent the last few months paying a dollar a week for. You don't always notice them because of the low dollar amounts — but they add up, and they do it quickly.

Now, it's important to remember that I'm not suggesting people go canceling services and apps left and right. Subscriptions are an important part of how businesses stay afloat. I've made my feelings about subscriptions clear before, and I think they're fine. I know others might disagree but to each their own.

But all apps and services need to earn their money and if they aren't doing that, it's time to get rid of them.

I'm willing to bet most people reading this have at least one subscription that could be canceled and I suspect many have quite a few more than that. Don't be afraid to have a clear out — apps only deserve your money if they're doing something for you, after all.

Now might also be a good time to work out which apps support Family Sharing, something that Apple recently enabled for in-app purchases (IAP.) Again, if you're like me, you might have duplicates here. You could be paying for the same IAP twice, for example. Speak to your family and make sure that isn't the case.

We're edging nearer and nearer to iPhone 13 time and it's going to be the best iPhone yet. Who knows, maybe you can cancel enough services to buy yourself a case for your nice new iPhone!

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

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.