Android 15 may add built-in support for app archiving

Most of us probably have at least a few Android apps installed that we rarely use, but don’t want to uninstall due to the hassle of setting them up again. These apps can eat up hundreds of megabytes, even gigabytes, of your precious storage space, and problems arise when you run out of storage. If you have an iPhone, you can use iOS’ app offloading feature to uninstall an app without deleting the app’s data. Google Play offers a similar feature called App Archive on Android devices, but unlike iOS, it’s not built into the OS. However, things may change with Android 15, as Google is working on building app archiving functionality directly into the OS.

For a little context, Google first announced its app archiving feature in early 2022, and said it would “help users remove parts of an app that are occupied by it, rather than uninstalling it completely. “We will be able to reclaim approximately 60% of our storage capacity.” ” The way app archives work under the hood is quite clever. When a developer opts in to this feature, the tool takes the Android App Bundle submission and generates his APK installation file, and creates an additional her APK called an “archive APK.” This archived APK is a heavily reduced-featured version of your app that is pushed to your device every time your app is archived. Its sole purpose is to add a home screen icon that users can tap to trigger Google Play to unzip the app.

Although Google’s App Archive feature looks similar to Apple’s App Offload feature, there are some important differences. First, there is no way to manually archive apps on Android. If you opt in to automatic archiving, your app can only be archived in the Google Play Store app. This means you can’t choose which apps you want to archive and which you want to keep. Second, the app archive is part of Google Play, not the Android OS. This means you can’t archive or unarchive apps from within Settings. It also means that any app store that wants to support this feature will have to build its own UI for archiving and unarchiving.

Now, obviously, you can’t easily sideload apps on the iPhone (at least for now), so our friends at Apple don’t have to worry about fragmentation in how they implement app offloading features. However, Android makes it easy to install third-party apps without the Google Play Store, so there are benefits to having a consistent app archive experience across app stores. That’s exactly what Google is doing by integrating the Play Store’s app archive feature into Android 15.

While looking into the Android 14 QPR2 beta, we found a number of hints that app archiving support will be integrated into the Android OS. The first hint I found was the introduction of new test commands in Beta 2 that allow developers to archive and unarchive apps. This feature did not work in Beta 2. However, in Beta 3, with a little tweaking, it almost works. After you enable the app archive feature, a new archive button is added to the app information page for individual apps. Tapping this button started archiving the app, changed the button to “Restore,” and replaced the app’s original icon with one with a download icon superimposed on top.

However, when I try to restore/unarchive the app, nothing happens. This is because this feature is not fully operational at this time. Tapping the restore button or archived app icon sends a request to the app’s “installer of record” (the app’s last installer, in this case the Google Play Store) to unarchive the app. The request is android.intent.action.UNARCHIVE_PACKAGE The intent (that the Play Store can handle) and the package name of the app that needs to be unarchived.

Native app archiving functionality did not work in Beta 3, but may be further fleshed out in future releases. Given that quarterly beta releases don’t introduce major changes that impact app developers, it’s likely that Google plans to release this native app archiving feature in Android 15. Once this feature actually launches, it will likely be integrated with Android’s app hibernation feature introduced in Android 12. I noticed that the “Unused Apps” page has been updated to include mention of app archiving.

To find out if this feature makes it into the next release, you’ll have to wait until the Android 15 preview program launches.