With the App Store built into iOS on the iPhone and iPad, getting the apps you want has never been easier.

But occasionally you do encounter annoying issues, such as the one reported by Twitter user Peter Steinberger few days back, where the App Store app was showing up an app needed an update under Pending Updates, but as you can see in the screenshot below he couldn’t update it as it was giving the “Open” option instead of the “Update” option.

You would intuitively force close the App Store app to fix the issue. However, as Twitter user Zachary Drayer points out there is a much more elegant way to fix the problem.

All you need to do is tap on any of the tab bar icons at the bottom such as Featured, Top Charts or Updates in the App Store app, multiple times to force refresh the App Store.

You will notice that after tapping on one of the icons around 10 times, it results in refreshing the App Store app. It should fix the annoying issue where the App Store is telling you the app needs an update, but you can’t.

It is always great to come across tips and tricks that you don’t know. This trick also works in the iTunes Store and the iBook Store apps. You can also use this trick to check for new app updates rather than force closing the App Store app and relaunching it.

Have you faced this issue before? Let us know if this solution works.

Thanks Alan for the tip!