Is your phone storage filling up? Or does your phone slow down to a snail’s pace when you’re scrolling Facebook? Or maybe you don’t like scrolling past many apps you don’t use to get to the good ones.
We’ve all been guilty of app-hoarding. Downloading apps with the best intentions of using them every day, then letting them sit, gathering virtual dust in the productivity folder.
This fall is an excellent time to clean down those old apps, ready for the new ones coming along with your New Year’s resolutions!
Use these three crucial tips below to remove some of the worst offending obsolete apps from your phone or tablet, securing and streamlining your device.
QR Scanners
Acting like a more complex barcode, QR codes take the difficulty of remembering a long web address and condense it to a more palatable image that specific databases on the internet can read.
Especially post-covid, our world is full of QR codes linking us to brochures, saving restaurants the hassle of printing menus and giving us great ways to digitally transform our work lives and reduce paper consumption.
Phones and devices in the past struggled to understand QR codes without help, leading users to download apps designed to read them and direct the user to the intended destination.
Thankfully, Apple and Android have caught up with the times, and since iOS11 and Android 8, there has been no need for the additional app to read the barcodes. The camera of these devices can detect a QR code within an image and will provide the user with the option to follow the link.
Flashlight Apps
When smartphones first came out, users were the ones that identified the use of the camera flash as a flashlight. Mobile app developers and businesses took to their computers and created an app to do just this.
Now all phones have this capability built-in, but some people still have a specific app on their phone to turn it on.
Not only are these apps obsolete, but they can be dangerous to your phone and your personal data. Too many of these apps request access to track your location or view your contacts and other data stored on your phone. Some even contain malicious code.
Look at your installed apps and see if that functionality is already built into your phone. Flashlight, calculator, and even Google Search are the worst culprits.
Apps That Aren’t Updated
Finally, and most importantly, apps that haven’t been updated in a while. Developers of mobile device apps should check their code’s security regularly, listen to user feedback, and release regular bug fixes to resolve or change the interface.
Apps that haven’t been updated for a few years will also not be using new features opened up by operating system updates or be optimized for use. This oversight can lead to bloated code and a bad user experience.
Any app that the developer hasn’t updated in a year or more should be removed from your phone.