If You’re Wondering Why You Haven’t Saved Any Space Via iOS 9, The Secret Is Out…

You might remember when Apple announced iOS 9 they trumpeted a feature called “App Thinning” which would only download the parts of the app that your iDevice needed to save space. You may also remember when I reviewed iOS 9 I said this:

One thing that Apple made a big deal of when iOS 9 was announced is that it would take less space when installing or updating and you would have more space on your iDevice afterwards thanks to “app thinning” which only downloads the bits of the app that your iDevice needs. That’s of interest to me as I have a 16GB iPhone 6 because I am cheap. Now the over the air update that I did was just over a 1.3GB in size so it was smaller than previous iOS updates. But I did not have any more space free than I did under iOS 8 when I was done installing iOS 9. Strange.

Now I know the reason. In a post to its developer website today, Apple informed developers that an issue with iCloud backups prompted the deactivation of “app slicing,” which is one of three technologies that make up “app thinning.” There’s no ETA as to when it will be reactivated which means that those who were hoping to gain some space back on their iDevice can’t. That sucks.

Of course Apple could simply add removable storage to iDevices or stop making 16GB models which would make this whole discussion moot. But that would just make too much sense.

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