Android 15 is still months away, but one of its new features has recently surfaced. Users will reportedly be able to archive the app to save space on their smartphone, instead of uninstalling it completely. This app archiving feature is currently available in the Google Play Store, for apps downloaded through the marketplace. However, there is no manual control, and apps downloaded from other app markets do not support it. Because of this, an OS-level feature via Android 15 could be much more useful.
Spotted by Mishaal Rahman writing for Android Authority, code snippets for this feature were discovered in the Android 14 QPR3 Beta 2 update that was released recently. Rahman was able to find the “archive” and “restore” options and activate them, allowing him to use the feature even when it wasn’t officially added. He then tried to archive and restore the app and found that the feature automatically stores all user data. Users will reportedly not have to log in or fear losing any of the data within the app by archiving it.
In his experiment, Rahman archived his Uber app, which took up 387 MB of storage space. After archiving, the size of the application is reduced to only 17.64 MB. A cloud icon also appeared on top of the app icon. Clicking on the application again started the download and installation process. After it was installed, the cloud icon disappeared. Surprisingly, opening the app showed that his account was already logged in and all the saved locations were also present.
This feature is currently available on the Google Play Store and can be accessed by clicking the profile icon > settings > Automatically archive applications. However, as mentioned above, this setting will archive rarely used apps that have been downloaded from Google’s app market. This will not allow users to manually archive the app nor does it support apps downloaded from third-party sources.
Such a feature is useful when the smartphone is running low on storage space and there is an urgent need to make room for installing another application or for recording high-definition pictures or videos. Instead of uninstalling apps and going through the hassle of reinstalling them and setting up accounts (and losing some in-app data), users can simply archive some apps. In fact, Apple already offers this feature in the iPhone and it is called Unloading the application. However, it also does this automatically and doesn’t give users fine-grained control to select which applications to archive.