Open Radar

 
Area:
Home Screen

Summary:
My 16 GB iPad is nearly full. The local storage part of system preferences helpfully shows which apps are taking the most space, however at this point most of those are games (e.g. Chrono Trigger, Kingdom Rush Origins HD, etc.) that I may not be playing right now, but removing them would also remove the progress in those games, which I don't want to do since I could resume playing them later, want to show my progress at some point, etc.

As a result, in order to preserve game data weighing on the order of a few kilobytes (not even a megabyte), I am forced to keep 600 MB of data around like an anchor around the neck of this data. This should be improved, as that data can easily be redownloaded from the iOS App Store.

I will note that in a few cases, the weight of the game comes in part from the bundle downloaded from the iOS App Store, but also from assets downloaded post-install; removing apps without removing their data should automatically remove all such assets as well (e.g. by only keeping data that is set to be in backups).

Of course, representing to the user the presence of such data (and that they take up space) is not a trivial matter. I trust you'll find something; if you'll allow me, I would suggest keeping representing the app in the home screen, but show it as a freeze-dried version of itself, that upon tapping would suggest redownloading the app from the iOS App Store.

And no, iCloud is not supported enough by these kinds of apps to be a real solution.

A workaround might be that I could reload the data for the app from an old backup when after deleting it I want to use it again, but it is not possible to reload a single app from backup: rdar://problem/7573929/ ( http://openradar.appspot.com/7573929 )