App Slicing a storage space saving feature that was intended to be included with the release of iOS 9 back in September, had been unavailable to developers due to an issue with iCloud backups. Apple on Monday informed developers that the feature is now available for use.
App slicing is one facet of App Thinning, an iOS 9 feature designed to decrease the size of iOS apps to save valuable space on devices without a lot of storage space. With app slicing, users only download the app assets created for their particular device rather than a full set of assets for multiple devices. For example, on an iPhone 6s, a user will only need to download iPhone 6s specific files, ignoring both larger iPad artwork and lower quality resources for earlier iOS devices.
Apple told developers that the issue affecting app slicing has been fixed, and now device-specific versions of apps will be delivered when downloaded by users running iOS 9.0.2 or later. This will be a particular boon to users of low storage capacity devices, as only the assets that are needed for a particular device are downloaded when installing an app.
In order to make sure your device can take advantage of app slicing, be sure to upgrade it to iOS 9.0.2.
