(Click on image to Enlarge)
App Clips are a great way for users to quickly access and experience what your app has to offer. An App Clip is a small part of your app that’s discoverable at the moment it’s needed. App Clips are fast and lightweight so a user can open them quickly. Whether they’re ordering take-out from a restaurant, renting a scooter, or setting up a new connected appliance for the first time, users will be able to start and finish an experience from your app in seconds. And when they’re done, you can offer the opportunity to download your full app from the App Store.
(Click on image to Enlarge)
Last Thursday the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple’s patent application behind App Clip, making this a patent fulfilled. Apple’s patent titled “User Interfaces for Enabling an Activity,” states that “there is a need for electronic devices that can enable quick and easy access to downloading and installing an application for an activity where the application is not installed on or available on the electronic device. Such techniques can reduce the cognitive burden on a user who accesses the activity using the electronic device, thereby enhancing productivity. Further, such techniques can reduce processor and battery power otherwise wasted on redundant user inputs.”
For a system that is meant to make life super simple for iPhone users, the patent is a mile deep in details with 590 paragraphs. For developers interested in reviewing Apple’s in-depth patent application 20210318792, click here. The patent was also published in Europe.
App Clips came to market with iOS 14 and well ahead of the finished patent being published. Apple is shown to have worked on this since at least April 2020 in a provisional patent not made public.
