Everyone has their own ideas about which apps are useful and which you could do without. Chances are, when you first brought home a smartphone you wanted to download each and every app that tickled your fancy — because why limit yourself? But as you slowly begin to realize that all of those apps can result in storage being sucked up and major battery drainage, it becomes necessary to pick and choose the apps that you have in your orbit.
Sometimes that means making difficult decisions about which apps to keep and which apps to delete.
From a purely storage and battery perspective, these five apps are among the worst. If your goal is to free up your phone and help it work more efficiently, start by considering the hold these apps have on you.
Facebook is the app that told us who it was years ago (when the world discovered how much of our data it tracks and what it does with this data), but lots of us are choosing to ignore it because keeping up with friends and family is important to us. There’s no way around it, though: the Facebook app is one of the most draining on your battery and it takes up storage space, in addition to being a potential privacy nightmare.
You can still use Facebook but avoid some of these problems by deleting the app and accessing Facebook via your browser.
Bumble
Bumble, Tinder, and other dating apps aren’t exactly “useless” if you’re trying to meet new people and find connections and love. But they are killing your phone’s battery and they collect a ton of your data. Think about all of the information about yourself that you reveal to these apps and you’ll get a sense of how much data it has stored on you. There’s no need to commit to a life of a solitude for the sake of a more efficient phone, of course — try seeing if you can delete all but one dating app. Choose your favorite, delete the others, and see if this helps your phone’s battery and storage capabilities.
Fitbit
Generally speaking, apps that collect a lot of data about you tend to be storage hogs, and Fitbit is no exception. This app can be extremely helpful when it comes to reaching your health and fitness goals, but it may be at the expense of your phone’s storage and data.
This one pains us to admit, but it’s true: Instagram is considered a demanding app that uses up your phone’s battery and resources to consistently update and provide you with new content, including resource-intensive videos. It has access to your microphone, photos, locations, and Wifi — and it can compromise your privacy.
Airline and Travel Apps
Unless you are a very frequent traveler, keeping travel apps like United Airlines or even the Uber and Lyft apps on your phone is a way to drain it of battery and suck up storage space that you could otherwise use for more important and convenient apps and files. These apps can slow your phone down, as well. Try pruning the number of travel apps you have on your phone by sticking to one that you use often, like Uber, and deleting the rest. If you download an airline’s app when you are making plans, remember to delete it once it no longer serves its purpose to save storage space and battery power.
