Offload Unused Apps Savings Calculator
Work out how many gigabytes Offload Unused Apps really gives back, and how much stays behind as Documents & Data. The calculator also shows how much returns the first time you reopen those apps, and whether offloading alone gets you to the space you need.
Offload Unused Apps Savings Calculator
Your phone
Offload Unused Apps removes the app and keeps its documents and data. Settings, Apps, App Store, or per app in iPhone Storage.
The average phone carries around 80. iPhone: Settings, General, iPhone Storage lists every one with its size. Android: Settings, Apps.
About 62% of installed apps go unopened in a given month, so most people underestimate this. Count the ones you genuinely have not touched since last season.
How big those apps are
A normal phone: some social, some utilities, a couple of games. Use the figure your phone lists next to each app, which is binary plus its data. Ignore the App Store download size; it is smaller.
Tap any app in iPhone Storage to see the split. Measured top-50 apps run around 43% code to 57% data once they have been used for a while. Messaging, streaming and social sit high; utilities and games sit low.
What happens next
Every reopened app re-downloads at full size. That space is a loan, not a saving.
How much room you actually need, for an iOS update, a trip's worth of video, or just to stop the warnings. Set it to 0 if you are only curious.
The gap offloading leaves
Photos at 2.5 MB for a 12 MP HEIC, video at 60 MB per minute of 1080p/30. Gigabytes are decimal here: 1 GB = 1,000 MB, the same way Apple and Google label capacity.
Free the rest with Swipe44
Offloading lends you space. Clearing the camera roll gives it to you. Swipe44 walks your library a month at a time, right to keep and left to delete, with a size badge on every card so the expensive items stand out. Duplicates get grouped on the phone. Everything you mark clears behind one system confirmation, and the freed space is tallied at the end.
What each route frees
| Route | Frees | Share of your goal | Permanent? |
|---|
The last row is the ceiling: the most space app management can ever free. On most phones it is smaller than the camera roll.
What Offload Unused Apps actually removes
Every app on the iPhone Storage screen is two numbers stacked into one row. App Size is the code and its bundled assets. Documents & Data is everything the app has accumulated since you installed it: caches, downloads, message history, offline media. Offloading removes the first and keeps the second. Apple spells that out in the setting itself: "Automatically remove unused apps, but keep all documents and data." It is the design, not a shortfall.
Which half is bigger depends on the app. A measured study of the top 50 iOS apps found they average 359 MB to download and grow by a further 474 MB in use, so for a well-used app your data is the larger half. Across a whole phone it evens out, because dozens of rarely-opened apps have accumulated almost nothing. That is why 45% data is the default above.
Run the defaults and the arithmetic looks like this: 80 apps, 40% of them rarely opened, 200 MB each. That is 32 apps holding 6.4 GB. Offloading frees 3.5 GB of it and leaves 2.9 GB of Documents & Data exactly where it was. Gigabytes here are decimal (1 GB = 1,000 MB), the same way Apple, Google and every storage maker label capacity. A byte-level count divides by 1,024 and reads about 7% smaller.
Offloading is a loan, not a cleanup
Here is the part most explainers skip. Space freed by offloading comes back the instant you reopen the app, at full download size, over whatever connection you happen to be on. Reopen a third of them within a month and a 3.5 GB saving is really 2.5 GB. Reopen most of them and it is closer to 1.4 GB. The calculator models that give-back, because it decides whether any of this was worth doing.
Two smaller costs are worth knowing. An offloaded app needs signal and patience before it opens, which you notice the first time it happens to a boarding pass or a banking app at a till. And if a developer pulls an app from the App Store, an offloaded copy cannot be reinstalled at all. The Documents & Data stays on the phone with nothing left to open it.
Deleting is the other side of the trade: it frees the whole row permanently and takes the data with it. The rule of thumb falls out of the split. Offload code-heavy apps you will return to. Delete data-heavy apps you will not.
Android archives instead of offloading
Google's auto-archive is the same bargain under a different name, and Google publishes a number for it: archiving frees nearly 60% of an app's storage space without removing the app's presence or your data from the device. The icon stays with a cloud badge and tapping it re-downloads. Android 15 extended this to manual archiving for almost every app, reaching around 95% in some cases.
You will find it in the Play Store settings, or per app in Android's storage screen. Switch the calculator to Android and it uses Google's 60% figure directly, which is why the Documents & Data field dims on that setting. Archiving leaves cached app data alone, and that is a separate pile again: the Android "Other" Storage Calculator covers that side.
Where the rest of the gigabytes actually are
Look at the last row of the comparison table. Deleting every single app on a typical phone frees around 16 GB, and that is the absolute ceiling of what app management can do. Plenty of camera rolls are bigger than that on their own.
Convert whatever the calculator says is still missing and it stops feeling abstract. At 2.5 MB for a 12 MP HEIC, 6.5 GB is about 2,600 photos. At 60 MB a minute, it is a little under two hours of 1080p video, or a handful of long screen recordings. Nobody has 2,000 apps, but plenty of people have 20,000 photos, and a large share of those are duplicates and burst frames nobody will look at again. The Duplicate Photo Space Calculator puts a figure on that share, and the Phone Storage Planner turns the shortfall into a ranked order of what to clear first.
Clearing it is what Swipe44 is built for. The library arrives in monthly decks rather than one endless scroll, and every card carries a size badge, so you can see which items are actually costing you. Duplicates are hashed and grouped on the phone. What you mark waits in a pending pile and clears in one system confirmation, with the freed space reported at the end. Unlike offloading, that space does not come back.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about offload unused apps savings calculator
How much space does offloading apps save?
Only the app itself, never your data. On a typical phone with 80 apps averaging 200 MB each, offloading the 32 you rarely open frees about 3.5 GB and leaves about 2.9 GB of Documents & Data sitting exactly where it was. Apple puts an estimate of the total on the Offload Unused Apps row in Settings, General, iPhone Storage. Treat that number as a ceiling rather than a promise, because it counts app binaries only.
What is the difference between offloading and deleting an app?
Apple's own wording, in the sheet you tap through to: offloading the app frees up the storage used by the app but keeps its documents and data, while deleting removes the app and its related data. Offloading is reversible and partial. Deleting is permanent and total. If an app is mostly code, like a big game you have played twice, the two free almost the same amount. If an app is mostly your stuff, years of messages or downloaded podcasts, offloading barely dents it and only deleting will do.
Does offloading apps delete my data?
No. That is the whole point of the feature. The icon stays on your Home Screen with a small cloud symbol. Your settings, logins, saved files and game progress stay on the phone, and tapping the icon re-downloads the app and puts you back where you were. The one catch is availability: reinstalling only works if the app is still in the App Store. If a developer has pulled it, an offloaded app is gone for good, and your leftover data has nothing to open it with.
Why is my iPhone still full after offloading apps?
Usually three reasons, and the calculator covers all of them. Documents & Data stayed behind, often more than half of what those apps were using. Any offloaded app you reopened re-downloaded at full size and took the space straight back. And on most phones apps were never the biggest thing anyway: a camera roll of photos, screen recordings and 4K video routinely outweighs every app on the device put together. Compare the Photos bar against the Apps bar in Settings, General, iPhone Storage, then run the iPhone Storage Size Calculator to see where your capacity is really going.
Does Offload Unused Apps free up iCloud storage?
No. Offloading is device storage only. Your iCloud usage stays exactly as it was, photo library and backups included, and turning offloading on will never move you down an iCloud+ tier. If the notifications you keep getting are about iCloud being full rather than the phone being full, this is the wrong lever entirely.
Should I turn on Offload Unused Apps automatically?
It is low-risk. iOS only offloads when storage runs low, it starts with the apps you have not opened in the longest time, and nothing you have created is lost. Two costs, though. An offloaded app needs a connection and a wait before it will open, which is a bad surprise at an airport gate. And an app pulled from the App Store cannot come back at all. Open your travel and banking apps occasionally and they stay out of the queue.
Is there an equivalent on Android?
Yes: auto-archive. Google puts the saving at nearly 60% of an app's storage space, with the icon and your personal data left in place, and Android 15 added manual archiving for almost any app, which can reach around 95% in some cases. The trade is the same one iOS makes: the code goes, your data stays, reopening re-downloads. Archiving does not touch cached app data, which is a separate pile the Android "Other" Storage Calculator covers.
What frees more space than offloading apps?
Almost always the camera roll. The 6.5 GB a typical phone still needs after offloading is about 2,600 HEIC photos, or a little under two hours of 1080p video, or a handful of long screen recordings. Easier to hit than it sounds, because a big share of most libraries is duplicates and near-identical bursts. The Duplicate Photo Space Calculator puts a number on that, and the Phone Storage Planner turns the shortfall into a ranked cleanup order.