Apple naturally wants people to buy new iPhone models, and for this, it has a policy to cut its support for old devices over time. Likewise, many applications require new iOS versions and therefore cannot be used on older iPhone models. But there is a way for your old iPhone to run new apps that it doesn’t support.
On Android, it’s easy to sideload old versions of apps to devices. However, iOS does not allow this in the name of user security and obliges users to the App Store. If an app no longer supports your device, you will likely find that you have been blocked from downloading it. But iOS also has a built-in solution for this problem that it doesn’t advertise.
App Store is the place to go to download old versions of applications that will run on your unsupported device.
Open the App Store, then tap your profile icon in the top right and go to Purchased. Here you’ll see a chronological list of all the apps you downloaded with the Apple ID (if you’re curious, you can use it to find the first app you downloaded). Scroll back until you find an app that you want to have on your device but is not technically supported and you can’t find it in the App Store search, and then tap the iCloud download icon on the side.
You will soon see a warning that the app is not supported on your device, but an older version is supported. Tap “Download” from here and an older supported version will be installed on your iPhone or iPad.
So, what if you haven’t purchased the app before? After all, when you try to download the app for the first time now, you get rejected but there is a solution to that too. If you have access to a newer Apple device, use it to sign in with your Apple ID and then download the app. When you return to the old device, you will find the app available for download at the top of your Purchased page.
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