Android 15 has a great trick to save your 128GB Pixel with “full storage”

Google continues to release its base-level Pixel smartphones, even though 128GB of storage is barely acceptable for high-end flagship models these days. For example, the Pixel 9 series can perform 8K video upscaling, store Gemini Nano models locally to speed up AI calculations, and costs at least $799 while offering a base 128GB storage tier. Masu. That feels unfair to me.

But Android 15 has a trick built in to alleviate the dreaded “Storage is full” notifications that frequently pop up on Pixel phones. It’s called an “app archive,” and it works as a temporary stopgap to free up some storage while you figure out exactly what you need to erase from your phone. Masu.

Archiving an app on Android 15 removes the app from your phone without affecting your data. Essentially, it hibernates the apps on your Google account until you’re ready to install them again. Doing this will return all data to your app. If you are signed in to your account, you will remain signed in. Even if you change a setting, it will remain changed. This is much better than uninstalling the app and reinstalling it from scratch if necessary.

So when your Pixel phone reaches 95% storage, take a quick look at your apps and decide which ones you don’t need right away. Then start archiving them to free up local storage on your phone. Maybe you won’t be traveling anytime soon, so your travel apps may disappear from your phone. Or maybe you can live without Instagram and its space-hungry apps for a few days. You can also sacrifice either Pocket Casts or Spotify to just use one audio app for a few days. Or, don’t tell your boss, but you can take a few days off from Slack.

If you’re like me and take a lot of photos and videos, save music and podcasts for offline use, and get frequent storage full notifications, app archiving can be very useful. Especially when a notification appears at the wrong time and you don’t want to think about what you should or shouldn’t delete right away.

Essentially, this gives you a short break so you can keep using your smartphone for a little longer and later slowly figure out what kind of media, cache, or data you can permanently delete to reduce storage usage. You can consider it. (Pro tip: What I often do is look up my videos in Google Photos. Remove from device (Delete the largest photo from your phone but leave it in your Photos account).

Even better, you can do the work ahead of time and set some apps to automatically archive whenever your phone runs out of storage, so you don’t have to think about this on the fly. Here’s how it all works:

1. Tap and hold an app’s icon on your home screen or app drawer.
2. Tap. information icon At the top left of the popup (inside a circle).
3. choose archive.

1. On your home screen or app drawer, touch and hold the icon for the app you want to automatically archive.
2. Tap. information icon At the top left of the popup (inside a circle).
3. turn on Manage apps if you’re not using them.
4. Repeat this for each app you want to automatically archive.

This will automatically run and archive these apps when your phone’s storage gets close to full, so you don’t have to remember to do it manually.

The app icon will remain in the app drawer, but the cloud download overlay will appear. Just tap it and the app will return to its previous state.

If you didn’t receive Android 15 on your Pixel or don’t have a Pixel, there’s still a way to do it using the App Archive. In reality, this is more of a Google Play Store feature than an Android feature, and has been available through the Play Store for some time. However, there is no granular control there. It’s a high-stakes game, and you trust Google to choose your least-used apps and automatically archive them when you run out of storage.

1. Open Google Play Store.
2. Tap your account avatar in the top right.
3. go to setting.
4. tap common.
5. turn on Archive apps automatically.

To see which apps are archived:

1. Tap your account avatar in the top right corner of the Play Store.
2. go to MaManage apps and devices.
3. tap second management tab.
4. Scroll to view selected chips Archived.