Google Play has an app archiving feature that lets you uninstall apps without deleting their data, and it's coming natively to Android 15.
    • William@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      I could see it maybe being useful for certain large games that you only play occasionally, but…

      That’d mean redownloading right when you actually want to play, which is a pain. Also, in ability to tell it to archive or un-archive something manually makes that situation even worse.

      It feels like those “ram doublers” back in the day… Neat in theory, but just painful in reality. It puts a check mark on a sales pitch, but doesn’t actually help anyone.

      • SheeEttin@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Yeah. For persistence and cross-device stuff, it makes more sense for it to be stored server-side. Either by the app author, or maybe Google could offer a few kB free for each app, like how Chrome provides a bit of storage for extension settings.

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      Backups. I have apps that I specifically won’t update for X reasons, and I have titanium backup to manage the backups. If I didn’t need root to manage backing up and restoring individual apps then I’d only have one or two more use for root.

        • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I haven’t tried it on 13 yet. I haven’t done a single software update on my pixel 4 for that very reason. All of the newer devices I’ve used aren’t rooted.

  • Doctor xNo@r.nfEnglish
    28·
    9 months ago

    Uhm. Newsflash. My Vanilla Android 9.1.0’s vanilla Play Store already does… 🙄

    Edit: Apologies for the tone above. I deserve the downvotes. 😅

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      What “vanilla” play store do you have? I have Android phones running android 4 through 13 and none of them natively have something like that built in.

      • Doctor xNo@r.nfEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        First off, my apologies for the tone of my first post. I am cyclothimic and sometimes (in bad moments) shouldn’t be on social media. Hard to draw that line sometimes, though.

        Secondly, in a more positive manner and admitting my error in comparing native in Android to the Play Store: I had this message popup on a full phone in the Play Store if I wanted to enable it. It is now also in my Play Store settings underneath “Google Play Feedback”.

        I have Play Store v39.4.23-21 [O] [PR] 599960585

        It also only sometimes does Archiving, but not often. Usually it’ll just still pop-up the uninstall-other-apps popup as usual.