Android 12 will help you declutter your phone of unused apps
Over time we download a lot of apps onto our phones. For the most part, most apps aren’t really storage hogs, but accumulate enough of them over the years and you could find a sizable chunk of your phone’s storage going to apps, some of which you may no longer use. The upcoming Android 12 update could help with that.
According to an APK teardown by the folks at XDA Developers, it seems that Android 12 will be coming with an app hibernation feature. Basically what this does is that it detects apps you haven’t used in a while and puts them to “sleep”. In the process, it also frees up space on your phone.
Image credit – XDA Developers
This seems to be an expansion of an Android 11 feature where unused apps can have their permissions revoked automatically, although in this case, it will actually result in the app being removed. In its current iteration, apps that have been removed will be listed in an “unused apps” page.
This is a feature that iOS users might be familiar with, where there is an option to offload unused apps. The app icons will remain but when users tap on it, it will redownload the app again. We’re not sure if this will be something Google will be implementing as well, but in its current form it doesn’t appear to be the case.
This could be a useful thing to have, especially for those who might have lower-end Android devices that don’t really have that much storage space to begin with.
Source: XDA Developers