Make Sure All Your Apps Are Working Before Installing IOS 11
Before you download iOS 11, you must ensure that any applications you rely on will work with the latest version of the operating system.
With iOS 11, Apple will no longer support 32-bit apps. Instead, anything that runs on iOS devices needs to be updated to 64-bit. At a super-basic level, 64-bit apps will run much faster than 32-bit versions and take full advantage of the current iPhone hardware.
If you want to know more, Digital Trends explains the difference between the two pretty well . This statement sums it up: “64-bit processors are to 32-bit processors what a car is to a cart.”
Apple has supported 64-bit apps on the iPhone and through the App Store since the release of the iPhone 5s in 2013. All devices thereafter supported 64-bit architecture, and every app launched in the App Store or updated after 2015 was required to support 64-bit.
This means that for most applications, the developer probably updated their application a long time ago, as Apple has been pushing developers to upgrade to 64-bit for several years now. However, some may still have been slow (or haven’t updated their apps in general since Apple made this call).
Apple even reached out to developers with the latest call to update their apps to 64-bit in June.
To find out if any of your apps will stop working, you can go to your iPhone’s Settings menu, then General, then About, then Apps on your phone. The next screen will display a list of all apps currently installed on your device that have not been updated for iOS 11.
If any of your favorite apps are on this list, the best course of action is to simply find a replacement. At this point, if the developer hasn’t updated their app yet, they probably have no intention of doing so. They need to know that their application has stopped working. If you really can’t live without something, you can contact the developer directly to see when and if they are planning an update.
However, it can be helpful to know that you are SOL before the upgrade, not after. Once you have iOS 11 installed, it will be too late.