Imagine updating your iPhone to the new iOS 18.4 update, which brings priority notifications, Apple Intelligence for India, Visual Intelligence for the iPhone 15 Pro, a new Sketch Style for Image Playground, some new emojis, etc, and then finding that your old apps are back on your home screen. These are apps that were deleted before.
There are multiple reports about old apps making their way back to home screens after this update. Strangely enough, this isn’t the first time. For many iOS versions over the past few years, we’ve had similar bugs repeat over time.
After the iOS 18.4 update, many people on Reddit and the Apple Support forums reported that apps reappeared randomly. This isn’t a one-off case, and there are several reports confirming the same. We can confirm that it’s not the Automatic Downloads feature that might cause this issue in some cases. As per MacRumors, the bug isn’t linked to the Automatic Downloads feature. It’s happening to users who only have one Apple device. This proves that it’s not exactly an issue with cloud sync.
One user shares: “Okay so after updating to iOS 18.4 successfully, I went to the app store to update apps. And to my surprise, this Chinese game installs itself automatically. How is it possible?…” The user notes that automatic updates and sync were both off.
A lot of users are reporting similar incidents. One user also shared that after updating to iOS 18.4, the iPhone randomly reinstalled Last War Survival. The app was present a few months ago but has been deleted. It randomly reappeared on the user’s home screen.
The bug doesn’t happen to phones that are currently jailbroken. It’s also not happening to devices that use third-party app stores such as Alt Store. The app reinstall glitch only occurs on regular, everyday devices that people use. Apple has not officially commented on or acknowledged this problem yet.
At the moment, there isn’t a direct workaround to the problem. If this is happening to you, the solution is actually quite simple. You just have to uninstall the apps once more. Long-press the app and wait until you get the popup. Hit “Remove the app,” and the app will disappear from your home screen. Apple might eventually fix this with a security update since it’s a serious bug that retains user data.
We don’t know the reason why this is happening, and it’s not a problem on every iPhone model. It might have links to specific models and regions or an issue with the overall code of iOS 18.4, but no one is sure yet. So, if you have updated to iOS 18.4 and you’re facing this problem, the best solution at the moment is to uninstall the app. It’s not an isolated incident, and it’s happening to many units.
