iOS 9 will give your iPhone a spring clean before installing

iOS 9
iOS 9 can delete and reinstall apps on your behalf

Apple has included a new feature in iOS 9 beta 2 that will temporarily delete apps from devices to make space for system updates.

This means that owners of iPhones and iPads that have relatively small capacities of 8GB and 16GB will no longer have to scour their devices to find apps and files to delete to make room for the updates.

Instead, when a user of iOS 9 wants to download and install a system update and doesn't have enough room, a message will appear telling them they have insufficient space for the download, and if they click "Allow App Deletion", iOS 9 will delete apps to free up some storage.

Temping

Although this sounds a bit brutal, the update files are only needed temporarily, so once they've been used iOS 9 will delete them. The new feature will then redownload and install the apps that were deleted.

Hopefully any user data that was associated with the apps will either be kept or reinstalled as well, so it should feel like you're carrying on where you left off without too much disruption.

However just because the feature is in an early version of iOS 9, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will make it to the final release later this year, but if it means we can download updates despite a lack of storage space – and not lose any of our files in the process – then hopefully this feature will make the cut.

Via Engadet

Matt Hanson
Managing Editor, Core Tech

Matt is TechRadar's Managing Editor for Core Tech, looking after computing and mobile technology. Having written for a number of publications such as PC Plus, PC Format, T3 and Linux Format, there's no aspect of technology that Matt isn't passionate about, especially computing and PC gaming. Ever since he got an Amiga A500+ for Christmas in 1991, he's loved using (and playing on) computers, and will talk endlessly about how The Secret of Monkey Island is the best game ever made.