To help make more room for new apps on your Android phone, the Play Store will begin offering “auto-archive” to seamlessly downsize your unused apps without losing your saved data.
With as much as our phones can do, between keeping offline music/movies/shows, downloading the latest games, and taking high-quality photos and video, storage space can sometimes run short, even on flagship Android phones.
When you run out, the Play Store will automatically suggest some apps to uninstall to save space. Of course, outright uninstalling an app has its downsides, as all of your data (if it’s not properly synced to the cloud) will be deleted with it.
To address this, Google has been working on a new way to “archive” Android apps. When archived, the core parts of an Android app are removed from your phone/tablet, but your personal data and the app’s icon will remain.
If an app has been archived, you’ll see a new cloud download symbol shown over its normal icon in your app launcher. The next time you choose to launch that app, you’ll be prompted to download it again from the Play Store, and when it’s reinstalled, everything will be right where you left it.
Making this process even smoother, the Play Store will soon allow you to opt in to an “auto-archive” feature that automatically selects unused Android apps to be archived. The first time that you run out of space for a new app or game, you’ll be given the chance to turn on auto-archive. Then, and any time after that, the Play Store will quickly cut down on unused apps until there’s enough space for what you want to install.
For developers, this helps keep your app present for your users, reducing the number of uninstalls. The only requirement that Google notes is that only apps that use Android App Bundles (rather than traditional APK files) can be archived. Moreover, if an app is correctly set up for auto-archive, the Play Store will be less likely to suggest users to fully uninstall it if they run out of space again.
