At some point, most of us have had to uninstall apps to free up space on our phones. And while it’s become less of an issue in recent years with the introduction of devices that start with 64GB and 128GB of internal space, not everyone can afford to upgrade the storage on their phone. But with some luck, deleting apps on your Android device to free up space may become a thing of the past.

Google announced today it’s working on a new feature it estimates will reduce the space some apps take up by approximately 60 percent. Best of all, your personal data won’t be affected. The feature is called app archiving and will arrive later this year. Rather than uninstalling an app completely, it instead temporarily removes some parts of it and generates a new type of Android Package known as an archived APK. That package preserves your data until the moment you restore the app to its former form.

“Once launched, archiving will deliver great benefits to both users and developers. Instead of uninstalling an app, users would be able to ‘archive’ it - free up space temporarily and be able to re-activate the app quickly and easily,” the company said. “Developers can benefit from fewer uninstalls and substantially lower friction to pick back up with their favorite apps.”

Google has started making archived APKs available to developers ahead of the feature’s consumer release later this year. If you own a relatively recent and high-end device like the Galaxy S22, you probably won't get much use out of app archiving, but it's a feature that could be a significant boon for those with low-end devices.   

After several months of testing, Amazon is opening up access to Amp, its social audio app. Amp shares some DNA with the likes of Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces and Spotify Greenroom, but there's one thing that sets it apart: the option for hosts to become DJs with tens of millions of licensed songs at their fingertips.

"This limited-access beta will allow us to partner with passionate early adopters in a diverse community of creators, so we can improve the experience and better serve everyone when the app officially launches," Amp vice-president John Ciancutti said. 

Amp is only available in the US on iOS for the time being, but an Android app is in the works. Users can download Amp from the App Store and sign up for a waitlist. Access codes will also be shared on Amp's social accounts. 

You'll need an Amazon account but Amp is free to use. Hosts can bring in callers and will have control over who can speak and when. They'll be able to schedule shows too.

Amazon has deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and independent labels and publishers to use their music. Hosts can play songs at any time during broadcasts, but there are some limits.

Amazon

They can play up two songs from the same album or three songs from the same artist in any three-hour window. You can't repeat songs in that timeframe either. You'll also need at least one listener before you can start playing songs, so don't expect to use it as a free ad-hoc music streaming app. Shows can't primarily be focused on taking song requests and you can't play any songs from outside the Amp library unless you have the right to do so.

Listeners will be able to follow creators and get notifications when they go live. More features are on the way, including Alexa integration and more search and discovery tools. You'll be able to listen to shows from high-profile hosts including Nicki Minaj, Pusha T, Travis Barker and Big Boi.

Shows aren't archived, so you'll only be able to listen live for now. Hosts won't be able to generate any revenue from the platform directly as things stand, but Amazon plans to add monetization options later.

Amp's community guidelines prohibit users from promoting self-harm, calling for violence, supporting terrorism and engaging in hate speech. They are prohibited from, among other things, denying mass tragedies (including the Holocaust and 9/11), having slurs in their usernames and profiles, victim blaming and glorifying hate crimes.

Amazon

Harmful misleading information and disinformation are banned too. "We believe that science and facts matter. That truth is a matter of safety," Amp's website reads. Mature content is allowed to an extent, but it needs to be labeled. Amazon has a moderation team that will look into reports, and, if necessary, suspend or ban users.

Creating a successful social app from scratch is no easy feat, even for companies of this size (remember Google+?). Amazon has another pretty successful platform where creators can engage with their communities in Twitch. However, it didn’t create Twitch — it bought the company in 2014. (As an aside, it'd be nice to see Twitch creators getting access to the same library of licensed music for their streams.)

It remains to be seen whether Amp will take off, particularly given that people aren't staying at home as much as they were when pandemic stay-at-home measures were broadly in place. However, Amp's mashup of Clubhouse and Turntable.FM with licensed music could be enough to convince people to try it.

Instagram isn't just waving goodbye to its IGTV app. As TechCrunchreports, social media consultant Matt Navarra and various Twitter users (including KenSchillinger and WFBrother) have all noticed that Instagram's dedicated Boomerang and Hyperlapse apps have disappeared from the Apple and Google app stores. Boomerang was still available for Android on Google Play through a direct link as of this writing, but searches no longer produce results.

In a statement to Engadget, parent brand Meta said Instagram pulled the software to "better focus [its] efforts on the main app." Apptopia data suggests Instagram pulled Boomerang and Hyperlapse from app stores after March 1st. Boomerang (the only one of the two available on both Android and iOS) was still relatively popular, according to Apptopia, with an average of 26,000 downloads per day before it left. Layout is still available if you want to create collages.

The removal isn't exactly surprising. The launches of Hyperlapse in 2014 and Boomerang in 2015 offered stabilized timelapse and looping videos at a time when Instagram tried to keep its app relatively lean, particularly given the lesser performance of some phones at the time. In 2022, however, Instagram is content to include a flurry of features as it fends off rivals, ranging from Snapchat-like Stories through to TikTok-style Reels. Boomerang and Hyperlapse are now just camera options. Toss in faster smartphones and there's little need for standalone apps revolving around single features.

The departures also make sense in the context of IGTV's exit. At the time, Instagram said it wanted to improve the video experience for both creators and viewers. This latest move is just an extension of the earlier strategy — it wants to save you from juggling apps just to produce a clip.

When it announced the Android 12L beta in October, Google promised the software for larger screens would be ready early this year. Today, the company is officially introducing Android 12L, which it's describing as "an update to Android 12 with features that will make tablets and foldables simpler and easier to use." In a blog post sharing the news, Android's vice president of engineering said 12L is coming later this year, "with planned updates from Samsung, Lenovo and Microsoft." But the company did not get more specific about timing than that.

That could mean devices like the Galaxy Z Fold, Z Flip and Surface Duo would be getting the new interface, which is supposed to bring features like home and lock screens optimized for larger displays. There will also be a two-column notification shade, a new taskbar for easier multitasking and other tweaks that make better use of the greater space on tablets and foldables. 

As senior writer Sam Rutherford pointed out when he tested the Android 12L beta, though some of these additions are compelling, some, like the taskbar, have limitations. It can only contain five apps at once, for example, despite having plenty of room on either side for more icons. Based on a screenshot Google shared with today's news, though, there are six icons on the taskbar, so that might be something the company has changed before 12L's public release. 

Google

Android has long faced criticism for being an unintuitive system for tablets, leading to a dearth in real competition for Apple's iPads. Though we can't say for certain yet whether 12L will make Android tablets substantively better, at least Google is trying to make it better so non-Apple users might have options to consider in future.

Samsung is looking into reports that it has been limiting the performance of a large number of apps on some Galaxy smartphones, Android Authority has reported. It has reportedly been using something called the Game Optimizing Service (GOS) to throttle up to 10,000 apps (likely to save battery life), including many that have nothing to do with gaming like Netflix, TikTok and Microsoft Office. 

Making the optics worse is the fact that it's not throttling benchmark apps like 3DMark, GeekBench 5 and PCMark, so you'd see no problem with your device if you ran one of those. Samsung is apparently aware of the issue and is investigating it, according to Android Authority, although it hasn't officially confirmed that yet.

The throttling was spotted by Korean users who posted a list of 10,000 apps that are apparently affected. Since the problem was revealed, Samsung's Korean forums have exploded with complaints from users about the GOS issue. "I paid a lot of money to buy a sports car that can go up to 300 km/h, but for safety reasons, I put a speed limit on it so that it can run only 150 km/h," noted one user sarcastically. 

In one case, a user took the popular 3DMark benchmark app and renamed it to an app called Genshin Impact that's on the throttled list. After renaming, 3DMark ran with a score less than half of what it ran with the correct name. The GOS app was present on some smartphones like the Galaxy S21 Plus and could not be disabled, but not others like the new Galaxy S22 series, according to Android Authority. 

OnePlus recently admitted throttling apps with its latest smartphones in order to save battery life, prompting Geekbench to delist the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro from its Android Benchmark chart. After being called out, it tweaked the settings in order to match each app's performance requirements with the appropriate power required. 

Uber hopes to accelerate a planned sale of its remaining holdings in Yandex.Taxi, the Russian-owned ride-hailing platform, reportedThe New York Times. Uber owns a 29% stake in the service, which was roughly equivalent to $800 million at the end of 2021. While speeding up the sale is directly in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Uber has been looking to exit the Russian market for a while. Last year Uber announced it would sell its stake of Yandex’s autonomous vehicle and food delivery divisions back to the Russian internet company for a total of $1 billion. In the wake of Monday’s decision, three Uber executives resigned from the board of Yandex.Taxi.

“In light of recent events, we are actively looking for opportunities to accelerate the sale of our remaining holdings and, in the meantime, will remove our executives from the board of the joint venture,” Uber said in a statement to the Times.

The decision aligns with similar moves made by private US companies like Google, Apple, Meta, Netflix and others to cut ties with Russia in light of its invasion of Ukraine. It will also mark the end of what has been a very rocky ride for Uber in Russia, since it first launched in the country in 2014. The ride-hailing and food delivery market in Russia was already dominated by Yandex.Taxi, which is partly owned by Russia’s largest tech company, Yandex. Both companies entered in a $3.7 billion dollar deal in 2017, with Uber owning 37 percent of Yandex.Taxi. Customers in Russia can use either the Yandex or Uber app to hail a ride.

Concerns that Yandex.Taxi is illegally harvesting user data prompted Lithuania’s transport and economy minister on Monday to ask Google and Apple to remove the app from their respective app stores, citing national security concerns. Back in 2018, the head of Lithuania’s cybersecurity center noted that the Yandex.Taxi app requests access to your camera, microphone and local data network, and urged locals not to use the platform. Yandex has denied the allegations and stated that the app complies with EU data regulations.

It's been more than 11 years since Instagram first launched... and there's still no native iPad app. Instagram users are limited to using the web interface or the iPhone version, an app that is definitely not optimized for the iPad's larger screen. And according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, that's not going to change any time soon. 

In a series of tweets between Mosseri and prolific tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, Mosseri said that there weren't enough iPad users to justify making a dedicated app. "The year is 2022 and there's still no proper Instagram app for iPad," Brownlee tweeted Sunday afternoon. Mosseri apparently saw it and decided to open up a bit about the decision. "It's still just not a big enough group of people to be a priority," he responded. "Hoping to get to it at some point, but right now we're very heads down on other things."

Mosseri shed a little more light on the situation; in a subsequent tweet, he noted that Instagram's team is "leaner than you think" and said the company was already supporting four platforms (iOS, Android, web and Instagram Lite). He also mentioned Instagram's competitors by name, calling TikTok and YouTube "behemoths." In relation to how people use Instagram vs. those apps, Mosseri said that Instagram users share more in private messages than they do in the feed or through stories, and that the company "need[s] to adapt." 

It wasn't exactly clear what he meant by needing to adapt, but it sounds like he thinks people are sharing more publicly on TikTok and YouTube than they are on Instagram right now. Adapting could either be finding ways to make people share more publicly or to improve the messaging experience that is so popular on Instagram, but Mosseri didn't say more on that point.

Finally, Mosseri indicated that Instagram internally views full iPad support as a "finally feature," something they want to get to but isn't a huge priority. "Things like supporting dark mode, scheduled posts, an iPad app, deleting one photo from a carousel, etc," he tweeted. 

While there are clearly millions of iPad owners who would likely enjoy an Instagram app, the company has done a lot to make the web experience better over the last few years. Messaging has been fully supported for a while now, and as of last fall you can even create Instagram posts from the website as well. Stories are still exclusive to the mobile apps, but the overall web experience is not nearly as compromised as it used to be.

Regardless, people will probably not stop asking for an Instagram iPad app any time soon, but at least the app's leader has been forthcoming about the chances of that happening in the future. Never say never, iPad users, but don't hold your breath. 

Valve says it’s willing to work with Microsoft to bring PC Game Pass to Steam. “I don’t think it’s something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time,” Valve CEO Gabe Newell told PC Gamer in a recent interview. “But for their customers it’s clearly a popular option, and we’d be more than happy to work with them to get that on Steam.”

Newell’s subsequent comments suggest PC Game Pass won’t come to Steam anytime soon, but that the two companies have had discussions about the possibility. “We’ve talked to people there quite a bit about that topic,” he said. “If your customers want it, then you should figure out how to make it happen. That’s where we’re at.”

While PC Game Pass may never come to Steam there’s at least precedent for Microsoft to follow. In the summer of 2020, publisher Electronic Arts made EA Play, its subscription service, available on Steam. It's worth noting, as The Verge points out, not every EA Play tier is available through the marketplace, and Valve's 30 percent cut of sales could be a contentious issue in any negotiations between itself and Microsoft. For what it's worth, Microsoft has also expressed an interest in getting Steam onto the Windows 11 app store. Last June, Microsoft’s Panos Panay said Valve would be “very welcome” on the marketplace.

HTC's VR strategy will extend well beyond using car rides as theme parks. The company has outlined Viverse, its vision for a metaverse, and it's promising to protect children from virtual dangers in the process. Viverse itself isn't so much a holistic space so much as an "open ecosystem" joining multiple platforms together. You could socialize in VRChat, hold business meetings in Engage, collaborate in Vive Sync and unwind with "holographic" concerts in Beatday.

HTC's day-in-the-life conceptual video suggests Viverse would also be full of plenty of metaverse buzzwords. You would exercise with AR fitness data, buy wine at a virtual tasting with cryptocurrency and browse NFT art (including the "Meowna Lisa," naturally). As UploadVRexplains, though, HTC's teaser is an unusual mix of real products with purely imagined scenarios, and no practical way to link them all besides what looks like a gateway app. The company is also optimistic about the adoption of this technology — there's no NFT backlash or cryptocurrency legal headaches in this virtual world.

The parental controls might be of more value. HTC is introducing a Vive Guardian app to protect the privacy and safety of kids (and concerned adults) in VR spaces. A "Free Mode" lets you grant access to specific apps and content that children can explore on their own terms. Choose "Broadcast," however, and you can limit young ones to specific experiences (such as apps and TV shows) beamed from the companion app on your Android phone or tablet. You can see what your children are using, and they'll need permission to download content or make purchases.

Vive Guardian will be available on Google Play and Viveport, although it wasn't listed as of this writing. It will support Vive Focus, Vive Focus Plus and Vive Flow headsets.

The existence of safeguards isn't surprising when other metaverse operators have had to restrict content. Meta introduced personal boundaries in Horizon Worlds and Venues to discourage harassment, while Microsoft shut down AltspaceVR's social hub following problems with harassers. It's just a question of whether or not HTC's efforts are enough to protect users — it's not clear that you can fence off every potential threat in a given VR environment.

Catch up on all of the news from MWC 2022 right here!

GM has told its customers it's shutting down the Marketplace app, which allowed drivers to pay for goods and services through the infotainment system. The app, which arrived in 2017, let them buy things like gas and coffee and make hotel and restaurant reservations via the dashboard. The company will wind down Marketplace starting in March.

“We routinely evaluate our services to ensure they provide the best experience for our members," GM told owners in an email. "In this spirit, we have decided to discontinue our Marketplace services."

The automaker brought the app to millions of its vehicles in the US, but it seems drivers didn't really take to it. According to CNBC, an engineer said that after the feature launched, the active user rates were in the "thousands."