Are you also one of those numerous folks who often need to get rid of apps in order to make room for new ones? If so, you’re not alone. There’s not even a need to have a low-budget phone in order to deal with such unpleasant situations. With millions of apps present in Google’s Play Store, your phone’s storage space can reach its limit in no time.
Thanks to Google, an upcoming Android update aims to solve the issue in a pretty ingenious way. Google itself made a big announcement on March 8, saying that instead of uninstalling apps, you’ll just have to archive them instead. In this way, you’ll practically get more storage space for new apps or anything else you desire. The tech giant is already working on the new feature, which is expected to arrive later this year.
Up to 60% more storage space
If the new feature will indeed be implemented, it means that Android users will get to free up to 60% of the storage space an app has taken. Parts of the software will temporarily be removed via archiving without having to delete the app itself.
Do you need another reason to be convinced that the upcoming app archiving feature works in an intelligent way? You should also know that the functionality will even keep all user data. Once you decide to revive the app you just archived, it will be restored to the latest compatible version.
Here’s what Google stated via its blog:
With the release of the upcoming version of Bundletool 1.10, we are taking the first step toward making archiving available to all developers using App Bundles. For apps built with the Android Gradle Plugin 7.3, we will start generating a new type of APK – archived APKs. Archived APKs are very small APKs that preserve user data until the app is restored. While we will start creating archived APKs now, they won’t be functional until the archiving functionality is launched to consumers later in the year.
Google didn’t announce a specific release date for the upcoming Android update, but we can expect to hear more about it soon enough.