The End of iTunes Wish Lists
Apple will soon do away with iTunes Wish Lists featuring movie and TV shows, according to emails going out to customers as of today. Apple says that people who still have wish lists should migrate items to their Apple TV watchlist before the feature is removed.
Each email that Apple is sending out includes a PDF with TV shows and movies that are on the individual’s iTunes Wish List. Apple says that users can tap on each link and then tap on the “+” button to get items to appear in the Apple TV watchlist.
Seriously? They couldn’t manage to code this up, I have to transfer each one manually? Really?
is this finally the end of the iTunes Store app?
I hope not, because the Music and TV apps don’t really offer the same functionality for managing the content you or a family member has purchased.
I used to use it to keep a list of movies I was interested and then bought them when they went on sale. Pretty annoying that they removed this feature.
Previously:
Update (2026-02-19): Juli Clover:
With tvOS 26.4, Apple has removed the dedicated iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows apps that listed content available for purchase.
Update (2026-03-02): Joe Rosensteel:
I have to warn you that any normal person in your life is going to be very upset when you upgrade to 26.4. Not because they were directly using the movies and tv shows app tiles but because those were likely left in their default position and were load bearing apps. Their removal reflows the home screen. If you know people with default top rows do them a favor and shuffle two other seldom-used apps up there. For the love of god don’t put anything important there because people have muscle memory.
8 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
- When Apple removes a feature: couldn't they code this?
- When Apple does not have a feature people want: I'd love it if there was this feature/I can't believe this feature doesn't exist.
- If Apple adds that feature: Sherlocking/silence/finally/too many settings/OS is getting too complicated and bloated/Apple feels this feature is good enough for macOS but not i/ipad/audioOS. Must be a money grab./Couldn't even add this to previous operating system? I'm not happy about beng forced to upgrade.
Add "billion-dollar/largest company in the world" to any comment.
I’m just here so DD can tell me this is good, actually, and that I am a peasant for not understanding why.
It’s just not in Apple’s model anymore to offer one time purchase. It’s been clear for some time their focus has been solely on in app purchase and subscription media.
It does still seem to be in Amazon’s and Google’s so until the cartel makes the decision to stop, there will at least be a buried “buy” option underneath all the subscription links.
But that’s next on the chopping block. Even though it just means “buy a license to stream this until we decide we don’t want to let you anymore.”
"When Apple removes a feature: couldn't they code this?"
They already did; it existed and was a table-stakes feature.
"Add "billion-dollar/largest company in the world" to any comment."
Sure: A billion-dollar company should be able to maintain a wish list.
Is the argument wrong just because you predicted that somebody would make it?
@Chik I took Brian to mean that Apple TV does have a watchlist feature, and Apple already has a way to map the wish list items to open in TV.app (that’s what the links in the PDF do), so why couldn’t they do the final step of coding a button to automatically add the items to the watch list? Instead, millions of customers have to do them one-by-one (if they even receive the e-mail). It’s like someone was tasked with writing a migrator and gave up before finishing the job.
Well at least they said something. When they removed the wish list from the App Store they just… removed it.
