Google wants you to have your app and uninstall it too with a new ‘archiving’ feature
Google’s changing apps on Android in a way that might save you some space rather than continue to whittle it away, as most app updates do. By tweaking how App Bundles work, which already cut down on storage space themselves, you’ll soon be able to “archive” apps as needed, saving your user data but cutting down the space they occupy when you no longer need them. And if you decide you want it back, the app can be easily restored.
App Bundles, if you don’t remember, were Google’s effort to cut down the amount of space that apps require when installed, as well as the data they consume when updating. Instead of distributing apps in big monolithic formats with support for all devices, App Bundles cut apks down so that the Play Store only sends you the specific bits you need, targeted for your device size, architectures, and other details. App Bundles do make sideloading apps a little more difficult, but even former Android Police sister site APK Mirrorfigured out how to solve that.
This new archiving feature builds on what App Bundles already does by adding a new kind of split APK to the format that can preserve user data and allowotherparts of the app to be uninstalled. Google spitballs a 60% storage savings if and when apps are archived in this way, though it will probably vary. Importantly, the preserved parts allow the app to be reactivated later.
The feature, according to theAndroid Developers Blog, won’t be available until “later this year,” potentially as part of Android 13, but Google may have a mechanism to deliver it to older devices via a mainline module or Play Services update. However, some of its prerequisites will start to debut with upcoming Gradle Plugin and Bundletool updates — itsoundslike developers won’t have to do anything special for it to work. If apps are already using App Bundles, as so many are these days, the format will simply change to work with this new archiving paradigm, though we still aren’t sure how it will look on the user side of things.
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