Your phone has a hidden feature to free up space by automatically ditching apps you're not using

The storage space on your phone can quickly fill up, what with movies, music, photos, videos, games, and apps to consider, and you don't want your handset to get close to running out of room — what if you need to download some movies for a flight or record a moment with the kids and there's not enough space on your phone for it?

Among the many tricks you can turn to to free up some space on your device, one of the lesser-known options is reducing the room taken up by apps you're not really using any more. You can do it on any phone model: Android calls it archiving, and iOS calls it offloading, but the process works in a similar way.

This isn't uninstalling apps (which is also an option for freeing up space): it's stripping them down to the bare bones. It works best for those apps that you're not using regularly, but that you think you might come back to at some point, such as apps you only use on vacation or at events such as festivals, or games you haven't played in a while but still enjoy.

What archiving and offloading does

There's a good chance you've got a bunch of apps on your phone that you don't actually use that much: you installed them to test something, or try something out, or as an alternative to another app, and they just didn't stick. If you're not using these apps though, they're really just taking up room.

Uninstalling these apps is one option you've got, and will maximize the amount of storage space you get back. On Android, open the app drawer, tap and hold on an app, then drag it up to the Uninstall button at the top; on iOS, find the app on one of your home screens, press and hold on it, then tap Remove App > Delete App.

You can of course reinstall these apps whenever you like, but it's not a particularly quick or easy process. You need to find it again on the app store on your phone, wait for it to download, enter all your login details again, and customize it the same way you had it set up before. You might also lose some account data along the way, depending on the app.

Archiving or offloading is a middle ground. The bulk of the app gets removed from your phone, which helps with storage space, but key files stay in place — and the app icon stays in the app drawer or on the home screen. When you need the app again you just tap its icon, and after a few moments the necessary files are downloaded, and you're able to pick up from where you left off.

Archiving apps on Android

This feature is called Auto Archive on Android, and Google promises it can free up as much as 60% of the storage that an app is using, without removing the actual app or deleting your user data. It isn't turned on by default, but you can enable it yourself.

Open up the Play Store on your phone, tap your profile picture (top right), then choose Settings > General. Turn on the toggle switch labeled Automatically archive apps, and when storage space starts to run low, certain apps will be archived for you.

You can let Google choose the apps that are archived when space runs low, or archive them yourself. To archive an app, open Settings then Apps: Select the app you want, then tap Archive on the app details screen.

Android might prompt you to turn on Auto Archive if space is running low on your phone and you try and install something new from the Play Store: if this happens, tap Turn on to enable the feature, or No thanks if you want to clear some space manually.

Offloading apps on iOS

Over on iOS, the feature is called Offload Unused Apps, and it was introduced all the way back in 2017 with iOS 11. As on Android, the feature is off by default, but Apple will prompt you to turn it on when storage is low, or you can just turn it on preemptively: From Settings, select Apps > App Store, then turn on the Offload Unused Apps toggle switch.

Apple doesn't explain much about which apps are picked to be offloaded, so we're presuming that iOS chooses the ones you've left dormant for the longest when space starts to run out. Offloaded apps have a small arrow next to their name below their home screen icons.

You can opt to offload specific apps manually too, whether or not you've enabled the feature for iOS as a whole. From Settings in iOS, tap General > iPhone Storage, then select an app, and pick Offload App. The same screen lets you uninstall the app too.

How much space you're going to save using this method is obviously going to vary, but you might be able to free up more room than you thought. Whenever you need one of your offloaded apps back again, tap on its home screen icon to reinstate it.

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