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I bought a movie except now when I don't see it in my library and the search result led me to buy it again

I bought movies and then when I search in my library, I don't see it, but it does show a result and if I click on it, it led me to a page to buy it again.


This doesn't happen to all my movies, but if I own 100 movies and then 10 movies are behaving like this, then it is enough to be quite troublesome to always contact iTunes support to try to get the movie back.


MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Jan 19, 2021 1:23 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 19, 2021 9:48 AM

It sounds to me, winterheat, like you don't actually have the movie on your computer anymore. If you cannot re-download it the usual way you may have to keep contacting Apple to see what they can do. Frankly you should make sure you always keep backups of all media you purchase online. See the legalese below.


Legal - Apple Media Services - Apple - https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms.html - "DOWNLOADS You may be able to redownload previously acquired Content (“Redownload”) to your devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID (“Associated Devices”). You can see Content types available for Redownload in your Home Country at https://support.apple.com/HT204632. Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services." Always download everything and keep multiple backup copies on local storage.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 19, 2021 9:48 AM in response to winterheat

It sounds to me, winterheat, like you don't actually have the movie on your computer anymore. If you cannot re-download it the usual way you may have to keep contacting Apple to see what they can do. Frankly you should make sure you always keep backups of all media you purchase online. See the legalese below.


Legal - Apple Media Services - Apple - https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms.html - "DOWNLOADS You may be able to redownload previously acquired Content (“Redownload”) to your devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID (“Associated Devices”). You can see Content types available for Redownload in your Home Country at https://support.apple.com/HT204632. Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services." Always download everything and keep multiple backup copies on local storage.

Jan 19, 2021 8:23 PM in response to Limnos

If I have 300 movies, how am I supposed to download all movies onto the computer, when it is 1.5TB right there, and a typical MacBook Pro is only 500GB SSD? Further more, many users do not download, but stream to watch a movie. So for those users, they don't download movies but just stream them.


Imagine if your iPhone is 128GB and you download 20 movies, then all the storage on your iPhone is almost all gone.


Jan 19, 2021 9:00 PM in response to winterheat

Oh, I agree, media files are large. I have two external 4 TB archive drives for my media, plus another two for backups. Apple's cloud service is handy for streaming but in the end if you want to know that the song or movie you bought 15 years ago is still somewhere for keeps you need to use your own storage. iCloud is a convenience, not a backup. If a vendor pulls the item from the store, the re-download is gone too. I suspect some things also get re-branded or re-issued and change identity at the store. I have seen others report not being able to re-download but seeing the item still in the store under a different name. Kind of like the remix issues of various LPs of yesteryear.


Anyway, please use the redownload service but keep the backups for the occasional one you find is no longer there.

I bought a movie except now when I don't see it in my library and the search result led me to buy it again

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