App archiving in Android 15 is much more flexible than you might think

Google today finally rolled out the Android 15 update to Pixel devices, ending a nearly month-and-a-half wait since releasing the operating system’s source code. One of Android 15’s particularly neat tricks is app archiving. This feature frees up storage space by deleting the app’s installation and temporary files, but it doesn’t delete your data so you don’t have to set up the app again in the future. App archiving is not limited to Android 15, as Google’s app store already supports it, but Android 15 makes this feature less restrictive and includes all app distribution formats, not just app bundles. It works.

Last year, the Google Play Store introduced an “auto-archive” feature that automatically archives apps you don’t use often. Google Play’s automatic archiving feature achieves similar results to Android 15’s app archiving feature, but it works quite differently under the hood. To make Google Play’s automatic archiving work without OS-level support, Google had to employ a clever trick. Google took advantage of the fragmented nature of the Android App Bundle format, which many developers use to distribute Android apps. Google Play Store.

When a developer uploads an Android App Bundle for distribution on Google Play, the Play Console automatically generates the base, split, and multi-APKs required for all configurations that the app supports, plus additional It also generates an “Archive APK”. Archived APKs are essentially minified versions of the base APKs that are installed on your device when you download many apps from Google Play. When Google Play Store archives an app, it installs the archived APK on top of the base APK file. This is possible because the archived APK has exactly the same signature as the base APK.

The archived APK is mostly empty, so it contains the app’s original icon (with the cloud download logo overlaid on top) and a small amount to send a command to restore the app when the icon is tapped. If you save the code for , much less is needed. space. Additionally, only the base APK is overwritten, so your app’s data remains intact and all the Play Store needs to do to get your app back to normal is to re-up the base APK (and any other necessary splits). All you have to do is download it.

To simplify the life of developers, Google has decided to make the Play Store’s automatic archiving feature work only for Android apps distributed in the Android App Bundle format. This is because the way bundles are typically generated and signed requires no additional work from the developer. Preparatory work to support functionality. One of the main reasons Google wanted to build app archiving support into the OS was so that third-party app stores could support this feature. However, most third-party app stores don’t use app bundles. That’s why Google decided to make app archiving in Android 15 work for apps distributed as APKs.

The fact that Android 15’s app archiving feature works with regular APKs is not mentioned in Google’s documentation, but it’s easy to verify. For example, Instagram and Threads, two popular Android apps distributed in APK format, can both be archived on Android 15. When Android 15 archives an app in this way, it doesn’t install an “archived APK” on top of it. Instead, the app’s installation files are permanently removed, but the app is treated as installed, so it appears on your home screen and settings. Android also saves a copy of the app’s original icon in a private data directory, applies filters on top of it, and adds an overlay to make it clear that the app is archived.

The fact that app archiving in Android 15 works for all Android apps is great news and will hopefully encourage third-party app stores to add support for this feature, as Google intends. If you’re wondering how to use Android 15’s new App Archive feature, click the link where my colleague Rita El Khoury explains it all.