Offload and quickly restore little-used iOS apps

APPS THAT YOU DON’T OPEN FOR A WHILE CAN BE PAINLESSLY REMOVED AND REINSTALLED AT A LATER DATE.

BEFORE, WHEN YOU sought to free up space on your iDevice by removing those apps you barely use, there used to be one option: complete deletion. Since iOS 11, however, an alternative method called ‘offloading’ was introduced. Now, instead of permanently ridding an app and all of its data and documents, offloading retains the latter. You can reinstall an offloaded app once you need it and continue enjoying the information you’d once saved in it.

Here, we look at two ways of doing this. The first is automatic. Select this and Apple decides when it’s time to offload an app, usually by figuring out how long it’s been since you last used it. The second is manual and, in many ways, preferable because it puts you in greater control. It also protects against future problems as we’ll later see.

Apps you rarely use can can offloaded and re-installed at a later date, but their data remains.