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Millions of Android owners receive free phone upgrade that cleverly saves loads of space – how to set it up now

IT'S easy to clog your phone up with loads of long-forgotten apps.

And going through and deleting them is a real chore.

Activate the feature on your phone
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Activate the feature on your phoneCredit: Getty

Thankfully, Google has got your back with a brand new feature on Android.

A little-known auto-archiving tool has recently been expanded.

Before now, the feature would only kick into action when you're low on space.

It was also limited to some devices.

Read more about Android

But now it's rolling out to everyone and will work long before your phone begins to run low on storage.

Instead, you can now activate it to work on any apps that you neglect.

Archived apps aren't fully deleted.

The app icon remains on your phone as though it's still there.

However, the main part of the app is removed - only data associated with it is kept.

Tap it and your phone will re-download the app in full again.

For example, a game you haven't played for ages can be archived, removing the main chunk of it, but your save points from within the game will be kept, so if you install the app again everything is as it was.

How to auto-archive underused apps

To allow Android to auto-archive any apps you don't use that much start by opening the Google Play app.

Go to Settings, then General.

From there, look for Automatically archive apps and switch it on.

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