Android 12 could borrow a feature from iOS to help free up space on your phone
We all have apps on our phones, some of them we use daily on the regular, and some that we use once in a while, and some that we might have downloaded for a particular occasion and never bothered to use it again. The latter is one of those things that is eating up the space on your phone.
That could change with Android 12, thanks to a report from XDA Developers who were tipped off by user luca020400 who discovered changes submitted to AOSP. These changes suggest that Google is working on a “hibernation” system that would basically take apps that aren’t actively in use and “hibernate” them, which in turn will free up space on your phone.
It is unclear how Google plans on actually doing this and what they mean by hibernation, but it sounds similar to a feature in iOS which offloads unused apps. For those who are unfamiliar, in iOS there is an option users can enable where if the system determines that an app is no longer in use for an extended period of time, it kind of deletes it from your phone and frees up space.
The app will still remain visible as an icon so you don’t forget that it’s there, but if you want to use it, you’ll have to redownload it again. Google’s implementation could be something completely different, but for now, this is what it seems to sound like. Either way, we’ll have to wait until the developer preview for more information.
Source: XDA Developers