Is iOS 16 likely to break old apps?

September 14, 2022 2:54 AM

Relative to a typical update, that is.

I have a couple of apps on my phone which are no longer on sale and which I want to keep using (field guides where the app publisher lost the right to the content). I know that sooner or later I'll have to give up on them, but does anyone have an informed sense of how likely iOS 16 is to break compatibility, relative to other iOS updates? I think they were last updated in summer 2020.

posted by Bloxworth Snout to Technology (7 answers total)

I could be wrong, but I believe the last time an iOS update broke apps was with the release of iOS 10, five years or so ago. That's when Apple stopped supporting 32-bit apps. I see a lot of current apps that require iOS 9.x and later, so I think you should be good running two year old software.
posted by lhauser at 6:50 AM on September 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It's unusual for apps to break that quickly, but it's possible.

I'd suggest reaching out to the app developers, either via their support link or through Twitter. They'll know if the apps run on iOS 16.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:10 AM on September 14, 2022

I could be wrong, but I believe the last time an iOS update broke apps was with the release of iOS 10, five years or so ago.

iOS 16 broke the RTM app in that you had to wait for an update that came out just after the iOS update did for it to work properly as a widget?
posted by ellieBOA at 9:16 AM on September 14, 2022

iOS updates do sometimes break apps. One a couple of years back... 13, I think... broke one of the apps I used daily, although only for certain phone models (may have been related to screen resolution). The author gave up on fixing it and removed the app from the App Store.

I would also suggest reaching out to the app developers to ask.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 10:12 AM on September 14, 2022

EVERYTHING breaks old apps, just some do it more flagrantly than others.

Android 13 actually broke one of Google's own apps. the Grasshopper JavaScript tutorial app. It was so serious, they pushed an update to LOCK Android 13 users out of the app.

And sometimes, the latest OS release simply refuse to run apps that are too old (they can filter by version numbers).

Without knowing your app in detail that only the developer would know, there's really no way to know.
posted by kschang at 12:27 PM on September 14, 2022

The Omni Group says that iOS 16 breaks OmniFocus 2 (released in 2013), although they don't mention specifically how/why, but that's one datapoint.
posted by kimota at 1:52 PM on September 14, 2022

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. You’re right of course that the sensible thing to do is just contact the publisher. I’ve emailed them and I’ll see what they say.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 8:45 AM on September 15, 2022