The new In-App Content toggle in iOS 16.1 allows iPhone apps like games to preload data after downloading from the App Store so they’re ready for the first run.
- What is happening? iOS 16 Beta 3 introduced a new toggle in the App Store settings to preload downloadable content into the app after it’s downloaded. This ensures that the application is ready to go the first time you run it.
- Why care? This switch can eliminate the timeout that occurs when an application fetches in-app content from servers for the first time.
- What to do? Wait until iOS 16.1 is released to the general public in October.
In-App Content switch allows iPhone apps to preload data
After Apple released the third beta of what will become the iOS 16.1 update, we’ve rounded up the biggest changes, fixes, and new features in iOS 16.1.
Among them is the ability of applications to open faster on first launch, notes MacRumors. If your iPhone is running iOS 16.1, you can go to Settings → App Store and find the new In-App Content toggle under Automatic Downloads.
So when iOS 16.1 becomes available to all users next month, in the App Store settings, people will have three options to automatically download:
- Loading applications. Set whether this iPhone will automatically download any free and paid apps you download to other devices using the same Apple ID.
- Application updates. Turn this switch on if you don’t want to manually download updates for installed apps from the App Store.
- In-App Content: Automatically preload in-app content after you have downloaded the app before launching it for the first time.
Enabling Content in App ensures that your iPhone will “automatically launch apps in the background to download content before launching them for the first time,” according to the feature’s description. Read: How to download files on iPhone
Why is it useful?
Mobile games like Real Racing and others will especially benefit from this feature in iOS 16.1 as they often require additional downloads after installation.
Other types of apps can take advantage of this, such as mapping apps that can download offline maps so you can navigate without an internet connection on first launch.
Keep in mind that this feature is enabled out of the box. If you don’t like it, you need to manually disable it by following our instructions. Prior to iOS 16.1, apps could only check for the latest content on first launch and then download it.
On a semantic level, it’s easy to confuse the new in-app content switcher in iOS 16.1 with the background app refresh feature in Settings → General.
While the new “Content in App”toggle ensures that apps are ready to go before they’re launched for the first time, “Background App Refresh”ensures that apps get new content in the background periodically so that they up-to-date whenever you open them.