It’s really not uncommon for a house hold to have multiple iPhones, iPads or Macs anymore. These devices share many of the same apps, photos, music, videos and software updates. What you might not have considered is that each device downloads its own version of this content and media even if it’s identical another device through something called Content Coaching.

Lets imagine a house with 2 adults and 2 children. 3 people have an iPhone, 2 people an iPad as well as there being an iMac and a Macbook around. The three phones are the same model so when theres an update to iOS they all need the same update downloading. Each device goes to the internet and downloads the same thing, possibly at the same time, which in turn might slow down your internet connection (not something you want when your are trying to catchup with some Netflix)

One of the children takes a photo and wants to share it with the entire family via iCloud (so that’s 3 iPhone, 2 iPad and 2 Mac, 7 devices in total) each and every device when it syncs with iCloud will download the something!

It seems silly when you think about it, why not just share between the devices? This is where content caching comes in.

So what is Content Coaching?

Content Caching is a service that your Mac provides and is designed for businesses and education where there might have 100’s of devices. The idea is that instead of each device downloading the same content over and over again when a device requests the content the Mac first downloads it. From then on, every time another iPad, for example, wants the same app it doesn’t download it from the internet but the Mac that has a copy. It greatly speeds up getting great content on your devices.

What content can be ‘cached’ is Apple specific things like

iOS Software Updates

AppleTV SoftwareUpdates

Apps from the App Store (and their updates)

Apple from the Mac App Store (and their updates)

Files stored in iCloud such as photos and videos

Pages, Keynote, Numbers and many other app content that is store in iCloud

iTunes content such as Films that you have purchased.

It’s really simple to turn on and once its on theres not much else to do, there are some advance options and features available for business and education but most home users wont need to worry themselves with these. To turn on Content Caching click on the  menu at the top left hand corner of the screen and then click System Preferences. Find and click on the the ’Sharing’ pane and then tick the box next to ‘Content Caching’. After a few seconds you’ll get a message saying that content caching has successfully been turn on.

If you want to check if your Content Cache is doing its job you can monitor how much data your Mac is delivering to other devices by going to the magnifying glass at the top right hand of the screen (this is called Spotlight) and typing in ‘Activity Monitor’. Once Content Caching has been turned on there is a tab called ‘Caching’. Click on this to see how hard and at what time of day your Content Cache is working the most.

To turn Content Caching off return to System Preferences -> Sharing and untick the box next to ‘Content Caching’

If you would like to discuss content coaching with one of our specialists, get in touch today.