A feature is shown in the Android code that can put applications to sleep and automatically save space on the phone

Mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS, after more than a decade of evolution in recent years, have focused on polishing and improving the system rather than making big and revolutionary changes. . Small features that optimize the operating system to improve the user experience. The last of these features is supposed to be a “sleep mode” for Android that would save space.

As reported by XDA developers, the AOSP team (Android Open Source Project) is working on a new function for Put applications to sleep when not in use for a long time. Although it’s in the early stages of development, we can see that it was introduced with the beta versions of Android 12.

Free cache, compress app

For now Android already has space-saving functions on the device by automatically deleting or cleaning up the data. For example, it is possible to free the cache of an application if it has not been used for a long time in order to have more memory available. This Android works independently for each user when multiple users use the device and the specific application.

Now what if the device only has one user (almost all phones) or the cache of all users is shared? At the moment nothing more than to release the cache. However, as the Android code shows, it is a future feature This allows the entire application package to be put to sleep.

In this mode it is not very clear what could happen. The app may be deleted from the device, it may just be compressed Take up less space or maybe neither of these two options. We’ll have to wait for the feature to become available in future releases and see what it does with apps that haven’t been used in a while.

Message displayed in the Android code for this feature to put the entire application to sleep.

On the other hand, it’s not clear either What factors are considered in determining that an application should go to sleep?. The logical thing would be that if the app has not been used for a long time, it would be automatic. It is also possible for an application to be put to sleep manually.

Apple’s iOS is leaving the Android universe a bit and currently offers similar features. By activating it in the system settings, iOS automatically uninstalls an app if it has not been used for a long time. However, all user data is saved so that when you reinstall everything remains as it was before, with no need to configure anything or lose documents.

This Android “hibernation” will certainly be Interesting to see it in action on low / medium range deviceswhere storage is usually one of the specs that is scaled down to keep costs down. Now it remains to be seen how well it is implemented, if so, and doesn’t stay in the tests of the Android engineers.

Via | XDA developer and Android Police