How to Transfer iPhone apps to your iPad

Here's something you would probably want to do if you bought a new iPad: transfer your iPhone apps you have purchased to your iPad.

There are actually several ways to do that but first of all you need to know that only certain apps can be shared, i.e. so called universal apps that are made for both iPhone and iPad. Certain apps, like Angry Birds tend to sell their iPad versions as "HD" hence you have to pay for it even if you already owned the iPhone version. Nasty if you ask me, and what more iPad apps cost averagely three times more. Of course you can opt to play with the iPhone version on your iPad if you can accept the sucky resolution which defeats the purpose of your iPad purchase to begin with. 

One of the biggest issues I had was that I couldn't find clear instructions on how to transfer your iPhone apps to your iPad online. So now, since I have learnt the art of doing this, here are the four ways you can transfer your apps:

1. Download from App Store under Purchases

This is the easiest method of them all. Just go to your App Store on your iPad, go to Purchased and download the app you want. However, I had some problems with this, and only a few applications were showing on my Purchased list! No matter what I did, I couldn't find a solution to it . [Update: Apparently the reason why my Purchased list did not show up fully on my iPad is because I changed my iTunes country from Malaysia to the US store a couple of months ago to download some apps only available in the US. So changing back to Malaysia totally fixed this on my iPad (but still doesn't work on my iPhone 4 on iOS 6.1, but I guess that's because iOS 6 is no longer supported)].

2. Download from App Store directly

If you have legally bought apps from iTunes, even though when you browse from a particular app and it says $0.99, you can still download the app for free. Simply key in your Apple ID and password and a prompt will say you can download the update for free.

3. Transfer purchase from iTunes

This method manually copies your applications from your phone to the computer first. Then later, you  add the apps you want to your iPad from iTunes. This is a pretty tedious and long process. Here's how you do it:

• Go to iTunes, File -> Devices -> Transfer Purchases from iPhone
• The apps will then be downloaded to your computer. Go to Apps from the drop down menu on the top left corner on iTunes.

• Plug in your iPad.
• Go to iPad Apps.

• Select "Install" on any apps you wish to install.
• Once you are done, do a sync with your iPad

4. Transfer IPA files using iFunbox to iTunes

This is the most advanced method. You probably need to jailbreak your phone, but I can't recall since my iPhone has already been jailbroken a long time ago. [Update: No jailbreaking required!] Download iFunbox and start it.

Go to the User Applications list on iFunbox, and right mouse click on an app. Now "Back up to .ipa package" and save it to somewhere. Double click on the said IPA file and it will show up in the Apps list in iTunes. Plug in your iPad, go to the iPad Apps section and select the apps you want to install.

How to backup your apps using iFunbox

What about my saved data for my apps?!

If you have been playing a game and all your data is solely stored in your phone, then you would most probably lose all your information. To get back your data would be another story to tell, but for now, I suggest you do a backup of your whole device on iTunes instead of just relying on iCloud. iCloud only stores iOS related settings, but if an application does not use iCloud, then you would not be able to restore your data at all.

So these are the four ways I found that I could successfully transfer my iPhone to my iPad. If you have any trouble with it, you can write me a comment and I'll see if I can help. Enjoy!