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Apr 12, 2001
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Developers who are installing the second beta of iOS 9 have discovered a highly useful iOS 9 space management feature, which will help users who have little space on their devices install major operating system updates.

When attempting to install iOS 9 on a device with insufficient space, there's a popup that offers to temporarily delete some apps in order to make room for the update. Apps that are deleted are then reinstalled and replaced after the operating system update is completed.

appdeletionstuff.jpg

With iOS 8, many users with 16GB devices were disappointed with the large installation size of the operating system. As it was over 4GB, few users with 16GB devices had the space for the update, which may be one of the main reasons that iOS 8 installation rates were slow for several months following release. Given the disappointment that many customers expressed with the install size of iOS 8, Apple's made efforts to make iOS 9 much more space efficient.

ios9installsize.jpg

Apple has significantly reduced the installation size of the operating system to just 1.3GB to make it easier for people to find the space for an update, and this new auto app deletion feature will ensure that almost all customers can upgrade their devices with little hassle. Other features, such as app thinning for developers, will also help free up space on devices by installing only the necessary app assets for each device.

Article Link: iOS 9 Includes New Auto App Delete/Reinstall Feature for OS Updates on Devices With Insufficient Space
 
I assume they're only going to do this for Apps that either don't have any locally stored data... or apps that only store data in iCloud.

Seems like quite a tricky thing to get right... if it goes awry people could easily lose data.

Also: think about stuff like Spotify. It is the largest app I have on my phone (currently ~8GB). I have all of that music saved offline for listening on the subway. If Apple blows away Spotify and reinstalls it... I now have a chore ahead of me to re-download many hundreds of songs.

I don't see this being all that popular of an option...
 
I assume they're only going to do this for Apps that either don't have any locally stored data... or apps that only store data in iCloud.

Seems like quite a tricky thing to get right... if it goes awry people could easily lose data.

Also: think about stuff like Spotify. It is the largest app I have on my phone (currently ~8GB). I have all of that music saved offline for listening on the subway. If Apple blows away Spotify and reinstalls it... I now have a chore ahead of me to re-download many hundreds of songs.

I don't see this being all that popular of an option...

Relax, they will probably think this through. ;p
 
Relax, they will probably think this through. ;p

I agree - I think they will. Just saying that it's going to be tricky to get right. The obvious targets are the biggest apps... but presumably you have all of that data stored there for a reason...
 
I assume they're only going to do this for Apps that either don't have any locally stored data... or apps that only store data in iCloud.

Seems like quite a tricky thing to get right... if it goes awry people could easily lose data.

Also: think about stuff like Spotify. It is the largest app I have on my phone (currently ~8GB). I have all of that music saved offline for listening on the subway. If Apple blows away Spotify and reinstalls it... I now have a chore ahead of me to re-download many hundreds of songs.

I don't see this being all that popular of an option...

Gosh I wonder if they thought of this!
 
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I agree - I think they will. Just saying that it's going to be tricky to get right. The obvious targets are the biggest apps... but presumably you have all of that data stored there for a reason...

I don't know how iOS handles data storage. Maybe they created a new process for this that retains the data and makes sure that the redownloaded apps are assigned correctly again. I don't think that Apple will use the same deletion process that they use for manual app deletion.

Would be nice if you could also do this manually. Say, with an app you don't use much but want to uninstall without losing the data. So upon deletion it could backup the data to iCloud. And the next time you install it, it should ask if you want to restore the data as well from iCloud.

That would be really cool too.
 
How much space does the update require? I had less than 1GB of free space left on my device and got the same prompt. But I decided to manually remove apps so I now have 2.2GB of free space. However, I still get 'Software Update Failed' for some reason for OTA update :(

 
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