Paid add-ons; can they be backed up?

[Paul Duke]

Hi, had to restore my iPhone to try to fix some issues with iOS, discovered that the paid-add ons were not backed up and restored from the computer (though the basic app was). I assume this is normal but I'm wondering if there is some way to back them up to my computer.

Re-downloading some of those files (especially the extended audio) is a bit of a pain from here in Beijing... For whatever reason it takes me 2-3 hours to download the larger files. I have tried VPN on and off, restarting wireless, DSL, iPhone, everything...

(I also upgraded to 5.1 from 5.0 and changed my Apple ID password to something a little safer at the same time... don't know if that may have affected any of this.)

thanks as always,

Paul D

 

[mikelove]

You can download the installers to your computer at:

http://www.pleco.com/ipdirectdownload.html

You'd then copy those to your device again via USB when you need to reinstall them.

We used to back up add-on data files via a USB sync, but we had to stop doing that due to an Apple policy change that accompanied the release of iCloud - basically, we're not allowed to back up any data that can be re-downloaded or re-generated. (they didn't want lots of generic data files clogging up people's iCloud backup directories)

 

[Paul Duke]

That's great! Thank you!

Paul