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Android 12 may auto-hibernate your unused apps to free up storage

Android 12 logo with 12 dots around it along with the Google logo

With Android 11, Google introduced a feature that would automatically revoke permissions of unused apps. Now with its next major upgrade in Android 12, Google may expand upon that feature and automatically hibernate those apps according to a report by XDA. Not only that but "temporary files", which probably indicate cache files, compilation artifacts and such, of those unused apps, might be removed to free storage space. Back in January, XDA had spotted a couple of new commits to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) Gerrit which hinted that developers were working on such a feature.

In this build that was tested by XDA, one has to enable the "Remove permissions and free up space" option in the "Unused apps" section. The option was present in the "App info" for every installed app. The images below from left to right show the steps.

Android 12 Auto hibernation of apps option enable

Android 12 Auto hibernation of apps option enable

Android 12 Auto hibernation of apps option enable

While the auto-hibernate and space-saving features are interesting and would certainly prove helpful, especially to Android users on budget phones with low storage, or as a battery-saving utility in general, there is no way to know if they will end up in the final build.

Source and images: XDA

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