Credit: Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
- We managed to fully enable Android 15’s app archiving feature to get a better look at it.
- This feature is only available via the Play Store right now, but Android 15 will bake it into the OS.
- This feature automatically archives apps you don’t use to free up space.
Flagship phones these days have enough storage space to easily hold hundreds of Android apps, photos, videos, and other files. However, a lot of people don’t buy high-end phones, and even those who do typically end up buying the base model which offers less storage. Uninstalling apps you rarely use can free up a lot of space, but it can cause headaches down the road when you need to reinstall and set them back up again. Fortunately, this won’t be much of a problem in Android 15, as you’ll be able to archive apps you aren’t using instead of uninstalling them.
Back in early 2022, Google unveiled an app archiving feature that they said would let users reclaim about 60% of the storage space taken up by an app. This works by “removing parts of the app rather than uninstalling it completely.” This feature takes advantage of the compartmentalized nature of the Android App Bundle format that Google Play uses to distribute apps. When developers generate an Android App Bundle to submit to Google Play, Google’s developer tools spit out an additional APK installation file called an “archived APK.”
