Android 15 may reportedly let users archive apps to save space

Android 15 is still months away, but one of its new features has surfaced recently. According to reports, users will be able to archive apps to save space on their smartphones instead of uninstalling it completely. This app archiving feature is currently available in the Google Play Store for apps downloaded through the Market. But there is no manual control, and apps downloaded from other app stores are not supported. That’s why Android 15’s OS-level features may be more useful.

spot Written by Mishaal Rahman for Android Authority, the feature’s code string was discovered in the recently released Android 14 QPR3 Beta 2 update. Rahman was able to find the “Archive” and “Restore” options and activate them, giving him access to the feature even though it wasn’t officially added. He then tried archiving and restoring the app and found that the feature automatically stored all user data. According to reports, users do not have to log in and do not have to worry about losing any in-app data due to archiving.

In his experiment, Rahman archived his Uber application, which took up 387MB of storage space. After archiving, the application size was reduced to just 17.64MB. A cloud icon also appears above the app icon. Click on the app again to start the download and installation process. Once the installation is complete, the cloud icon disappears. Surprisingly, opening the app showed that his account was logged in and all the saved locations were there as well.

This feature is currently available on the Google Play Store and can be accessed by clicking on your profile icon > set up > Automatic archiving application. However, as mentioned above, this setting will archive rarely used apps downloaded from the Google App Market. This neither allows users to manually archive apps, nor does it support any apps downloaded from third-party sources.

This feature is useful when your smartphone is running out of storage space and you need to free up emergency space to install other apps or capture HD images or videos. Instead of uninstalling apps and going through the pain of reinstalling and setting up accounts (and losing some in-app data), users can simply archive some apps.It’s worth noting that Apple already offers this feature in the iPhone, where it’s called App uninstall. However, this also works automatically and does not provide users with fine-grained control over selecting which apps to archive.