App Graveyard

How to complete App Graveyard

Apps you never open still cost you storage, background battery, notification pings, and data quietly flowing to companies you forgot existed. A purge takes under an hour, makes your phone feel new, and shrinks your attack surface as a bonus.

1. Pull up your apps sorted by last used: on iPhone go to Settings, General, iPhone Storage; on Android open Play Store, Manage apps and devices, and sort by least used.
2. Delete everything untouched for six months. Games you might get back to and airlines you flew once are the usual suspects.
3. For services you are done with entirely, delete the account inside the app first, not just the icon.
4. Disable automatic app restore so the graveyard does not resurrect on your next phone.
5. Do a final home-screen pass: remove anything that survives only out of habit.

Tips

• If deleting feels risky, offload instead — iPhone's Offload App keeps your data but removes the app.
• Six months is a floor, not the bar; three photo editors can become one.
• Check your subscriptions while you are in settings — dead apps often have live billing.

What counts as done

No app on your phone has gone unopened for six months or more, and you can name a reason for everything that stayed.