We thought Marvin was Gone, but we are smarter than Apple!

[Turtle91]

This is a repost from page 424242 of the "Marvin is Gone" thread for those who didn't want to read through all those pages for the recovery procedure.

<===>

Marvin is up and running, all my backed-up books installed, and no banner taking up any screen space!!!

For anyone as ignorant uninformed as I was, here are a few steps to reinstall Marvin even though it is no longer available on the Apple store:

1) Download and install iMazing. I was able to do this with the free version of iMazing although there was a report here that you needed the paid version, ymmv.

2) Follow the directions in this video to install Marvin.

• you either need to have a current version of Marvin installed on another device to extract the .ipa file ---OR--- you can extract the "Marvin.imazingapp" file from an older iOS backup!!

Steps 3 and 4 are optional if you want to restore books from a Marvin backup.
3) Once you have Marvin installed you can use imazing to drag your marvin.m3backup file (the backup of epubs that Marvin makes) to your documents folder in Marvin.



4) In Marvin, goto settings (sprocket in top left corner), select "General settings", scroll all the way to the bottom to "ADVANCED (BE CAREFUL)" and select "Backup and restore". Then select "Restore a backup". If you have your marvin.m3backup file in your Marvin documents folder from the previous step, then it will restore all the books from the time that backup file was made. WARNING: this is destructive and will remove any books you currently have in Marvin....which honestly shouldn't be any if you are trying to install a fresh version of Marvin ... anyway, if there are any books you want to save, do it before accomplishing this step.

5) To remove the banner at the bottom of the screen: go to settings and select "Support Marvin", scroll all the way to the bottom and select the "Restore previous tips" tag. That may, or may not, say it was successful, but the banner should be gone.




Voila! You have a fully functional Marvin restored to your iThing!

I HIGHLY recommend going into your iThing settings and DISABLE Apple's 'feature' to offload unused apps.

6) goto iOS settings, scroll down to "App Store" and deselect (turn off) "Offload Unused Apps". Be aware you will be responsible for removing any apps you don't want if you start running out of space on your iThing.



Cheers!

[Turtle91]

If anyone has any questions on this process, please post in this thread and not the other.

Thanks!

[Acousticvillage]

WOW!!!!
Thank you so much. I have just updated my ipad, which I have been using for the last 10 years. I was absolutely gutted that the new one wouldn't carry over the Marvin3 app.
I'm looking forward to giving this a go. But thank you for posting this!

[Turtle91]

No worries! Hope it goes smoothly!

[Acousticvillage]

I followed the advice given in this thread. Downloaded iMazing and now have Marvin 3 installed on ios 18.5.
Brilliant.

Originally Posted by Turtle91

This is a repost from page 424242 of the "Marvin is Gone" thread for those who didn't want to read through all those pages for the recovery procedure.

<===>

Marvin is up and running, all my backed-up books installed, and no banner taking up any screen space!!!

For anyone as ignorant uninformed as I was, here are a few steps to reinstall Marvin even though it is no longer available on the Apple store:

1) Download and install iMazing. I was able to do this with the free version of iMazing although there was a report here that you needed the paid version, ymmv.

2) Follow the directions in this video to install Marvin.

• you either need to have a current version of Marvin installed on another device to extract the .ipa file ---OR--- you can extract the "Marvin.imazingapp" file from an older iOS backup!!

Attachment 215868

Steps 3 and 4 are optional if you want to restore books from a Marvin backup.
3) Once you have Marvin installed you can use imazing to drag your marvin.m3backup file (the backup of epubs that Marvin makes) to your documents folder in Marvin.

Attachment 215867

4) In Marvin, goto settings (sprocket in top left corner), select "General settings", scroll all the way to the bottom to "ADVANCED (BE CAREFUL)" and select "Backup and restore". Then select "Restore a backup". If you have your marvin.m3backup file in your Marvin documents folder from the previous step, then it will restore all the books from the time that backup file was made. WARNING: this is destructive and will remove any books you currently have in Marvin....which honestly shouldn't be any if you are trying to install a fresh version of Marvin ... anyway, if there are any books you want to save, do it before accomplishing this step.

5) To remove the banner at the bottom of the screen: go to settings and select "Support Marvin", scroll all the way to the bottom and select the "Restore previous tips" tag. That may, or may not, say it was successful, but the banner should be gone.


Attachment 215866

Voila! You have a fully functional Marvin restored to your iThing!

I HIGHLY recommend going into your iThing settings and DISABLE Apple's 'feature' to offload unused apps.

6) goto iOS settings, scroll down to "App Store" and deselect (turn off) "Offload Unused Apps". Be aware you will be responsible for removing any apps you don't want if you start running out of space on your iThing.

Attachment 215865

Cheers!

[Acousticvillage]

I successfully managed to install Marvin 3 on my new iPad 11th gen. However, the Cloud Picker seems to have lost Google Drive and it doesn't offer an option of adding your own cloud service. Is there a way I can add a cliud based service?

Originally Posted by Turtle91

If anyone has any questions on this process, please post in this thread and not the other.

Thanks!

[Turtle91]

I’m pretty sure you can still link Dropbox. I use Calibre’s OPDS server mostly, and you can access any online OPDS server.

[jadepearl]

Thanks for the information!

I was able to load Marvin to my phone but was unable to finalise the install. The phone insists that it wants to download from the app store though the file is already installed on the phone. Have you determined if there is a way to bypass this demand?

[jadepearl]

Update: I was able to bring Marvin over to my iPhone on the latest OS by doing the following:

1) BOTH target and source devices need to be plugged into your desktop.
2) If the source device is connected via hub then the app will say it installed the IPA and even show the app on the device but it will try to get a download off the app store so you are back to square two. The solution is to shut down and restart both the iMazing app and the target device, and then plug the target device DIRECTLY into the desktop.
3) After sorting out the above situation, then you install the IPA file again. It then reinstalls completely without app store intervention.

This has made me so happy.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by jadepearl

Thanks for the information!

I was able to load Marvin to my phone but was unable to finalise the install. The phone insists that it wants to download from the app store though the file is already installed on the phone. Have you determined if there is a way to bypass this demand?

Hmmmm. I didn't have that issue. Let me do a little research and see if I can figure that out, unless someone else around here already knows the answer?

Do you have an image of the error?

[Alex Scherr]

I replaced my 2018 iPad with a 2024 model, and I encountered the same problem with reloading Marvin. This procedure worked beautifully for me. Thank you so much for reposting it and in a helpfully concise format. I have Marvin back in full!

[KLF]

Just a confirmation before I begin myself.

Can I extract marvin.ipa files and store them somewhere outside the whole device backup? Or is the option only to drag them from a backup into a new device?

I still have Marvin3 in my phone and original Marvin in my iPad. Both have survived IOS updates all the way to 26.

[Turtle91]

You can save the ipa file. I currently keep a copy on my desktop. iMazing just asks where the file is located when you go to install it.

[Bayaz]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

You can save the ipa file. I currently keep a copy on my desktop. iMazing just asks where the file is located when you go to install it.

Thanks for the amazing article and video! I used it a while back to rescue Marvin reader when my iPhone 12 died and my carrier replaced it with a “new” iPhone 12.

But now my situation is a confusing mess. I got a new iPhone 17, but before it arrived, the screen on my 4 year old (perfectly functioning) iPad suddenly died, leaving me without a device from which to copy Marvin and some other apps that aren’t on the App Store anymore. The geniuses at the Apple Store couldn’t fix it. It’s under the same iCloud account but I’ve never jailbroken any of my devices. It’s frustrating that I bought (not pirated) Marvin but can’t transfer it.

And it gets even better. I’m obsessive about backups but my Windows 10 laptop died from running a Microsoft update and I can’t get it to boot up no matter what I do. That’s where all of my backups are of course haha. So I basically need to buy a new iPad and a new computer and figure this out.

Honestly, I’m not even asking you guys for help. I hope no one else is in this frustrating situation like me.