Since my iPhone app folder started to become quite substantial (4.5GB +) I wanted to move these files without a lot of hassle.

It should be noted that my iTunes configuration is somewhat different due to the fact that I use Libra (http://www.sillybit.com/libra/) to manage a few different libraries on my Mac.

Since I already had all the audio and video files stored on an external drive I just needed to find an easy way of doing the same thing with my applications.

This is what I did:

– Move the ‘Mobile Applications’ folder to my external drive
– Open up iTunes to find that iTunes can’t find the files anymore and has no way batch changing all the links to the new location.
– Spend some time looking online
– Spend some more time not finding a simple solution
– Getting an idea for my own solution
– Creating an ‘alias’ folder by option-command dragging the copied Mobile Applications folder to the original location of the folder (in my case ~/Music/iTunes) and making sure the name says Mobile Applications
– restarting iTunes to find it’s having no problem finding the files and everything working like it should.

So there it is.. It was as easy as moving the folder and creating an alias in the original location, at least for me this worked…

Update: It seems the above steps led to my entire app library being copied to the iPhone (including the ones that I had previously removed but still had in the library). This could be because I restarted iTunes after copying and removing the original folder before I created the alias. So just keep in mind, that this could lead to you having to reselect which apps you want to copy to the iPhone, or like I’m doing in my case, take this opportunity to start removing the ones you don’t want to put on there anymore.