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It looks like Android 11 was released just five minutes ago, but news about the next big release is about to arrive quickly. If last year’s schedule allows, we can have the first preview of Android 12 for developers as early as next month. We’ve heard some little rumors about it so far – Android Runtime is set to become a Project Mainline module and it will be easier to use alternative app stores – but the latest news seems especially intriguing.

If you’re like me, you have a bunch of unused apps on your phone that you’ll definitely use someday … maybe. We have been saying this for months, but we may be about to light them at any time. Until we start using them, they just take up space on our phones. According to a pair of Gerrit entries from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) about which XDA developers have been informed, Android 12 could feature a feature that will allow these inactive applications to enter a hibernation state.

Changes to the AOSP code suggest that Google is working on a new system service that will put idle applications in a deep sleep that would also allow for storage optimization.

System service that manages the application’s hibernation state, a state applications can enter into, which means that they are not being used actively and can be optimized for storage. The actual policy for determining whether an application should hibernate is managed by the PermissionController code.

It is unclear what exactly will determine that an application can be put into hibernation. This can happen automatically when an application is not used for a certain period of time, or it can be a manual configuration so that you can choose to hibernate an application until you need it again. Perhaps both scenarios are possible. Android 12 Developer Preview may arrive too soon to be included in any functional form, but it is an interesting prospect that we will probably hear more about in the coming months.


Mishaal Rahman, The next Android application hibernation feature will work differently, depending on whether it is enabled for a single user or for all users. If there is only a single user on a multiuser device, the application cache for that specific user will be cleared.

A whole referenced in the code tells us that the next step will be to support hibernation at the package level that will affect all users, although it is unclear how it will be different. It is possible that all application data will be erased and / or that the application itself will be effectively removed from the device, to be reinstalled when the user switches off hibernation. How all of this will stay on the front end is also still a mystery, so wait for more details when we receive them.