Android will archive apps to free up your smartphone’s storage space

Android will soon come up with a new way to free up your smartphone’s storage space. Google explains that it has developed a solution that allows applications to be archived to recover memory. Available by the end of the year, this option represents an alternative to completely uninstalling an app.

Google discovered a solution for free up storage space on Android smartphones. In a blog post published on March 8, 2022, the Mountain View giant explains that it has “begin to work” on a new feature that will allow applications to be archived.

When a user decides to archive an application that he no longer uses regularly, Android will uninstall part of this app. The application will not be completely uninstalled from your phone. Google assures that the archiving of apps should allow release 60% of devolved storage with each application, which should quickly be felt on the amount of remaining memory.

Read also: Android 13 will allow you to adjust the intensity of the flashlight, like iOS

Google offers to archive unused Android apps to save storage space

“An archived application will remain on the device and can easily be restored to the latest compatible version available, while preserving user data”, say Lidia Gaymond and Vicki Amin, product managers at Google, in the post. To keep the data inherent to the app, Android will generate an archived APK file. Data stored in the app, such as usernames or passwords, notes or photos, will be recovered when the app is reactivated.

Thanks to this novelty, owners of Android smartphones will not be no need to periodically uninstall apps to recover some memory. Likewise, they will not be forced to expand their phone’s storage space with an SD card or invest in a smartphone with a large memory.

Google points out that the implementation of archiving is still in its infancy. The company has started making archived APKs available to all developers using App Bundles, the release format for Google Play. “While we’re starting to create archived APKs now, they won’t be functional until the archiving feature is released to consumers later this year,” tempers Google.

Archiving apps will therefore be available on Android by the end of 2022. The feature can be expected to be part of the novelties of the Android 13 update, the final version of which is scheduled for deployment next September.