iOS 9’s App Thinning Feature Has Been Delayed

One of the features Apple announced that would be coming to iOS 9 was app thinning. This is a pretty smart feature and for those who are only opting to get the 16GB iPhone or who already have a 16GB iPhone, this could be quite a space saver. Unfortunately for those looking forward to the feature, it has been delayed.

According to Apple (via 9to5Mac), this is apparently due to a bug with iCloud. Apple writes on its developer center, “App slicing is currently unavailable for iOS 9 apps due to an issue affecting iCloud backups created from iOS 9 where some apps from the App Store would only restore to the same model of iOS device.”

Unfortunately no word on when the feature will be released, but presumably it will be when the bug with iCloud has been fixed. As it stands what happens usually when you download an app is that all assets of the app is downloaded. This means that if you have an iPhone 6s, it will still download assets needed for all compatible models.

This is highly unnecessary which is where app thinning (or app slicing as Apple calls it) comes in. It allows developers to mark assets so that in the future, iOS users will only need to download the content applicable to them.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: ios 9