Caches by design should be self cleaning
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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It's possible. In the YouTube application, this is really true, but in many others the cache is not deleted by itself.
Interesting, I would guess most developers trust the caching mechanisms they are using will perform well long term, and don't consider that a user would want more control over the cache. Caching is inherently a performance feature, so it's probably seen as essential to user experience rather than an option
From the QA perspective, I think most developers assume the cache mechanism will keep working the way it does on their device in their short development cycle, and don’t really consider whether it will eventually break, when applied to millions of different configurations for an extended time, with differing usage behaviors
Caches are critical for performance, but a cache with a bad expiration policy is another name for a memory leak.
It’s easier to add caching than it is to design an expiration policy.
A lot of caching mechanisms are not based on time but size. In other words, they have some set limit of space they can take up on your device. Once that limit is hit, they start evicting older cached data. This means the cache will never be cleared but it also means it shouldn't grow unbounded.
If an app you've installed is "caching" and it has no eviction policy and can grow unbounded then that is a pretty big bug.
Many implementations of caches set a desired maximum size and purge unused entries as new entries come in. It's hard to pick the "right" cache size for a phone these days. My phone has about 84GB of unused space which is just doing nothing, so I don't mind if every app uses a gigabyte or two of cache when they need it. Someone still running on a 32GB phone will obviously think otherwise. Manufacturers like Samsung disabling adoptable storage makes the situation worse.
Devs could make these sizes configurable, but most users don't know what that means. There's a good chance they think caches are a waste of space (because clearing caches makes everything slower, but doesn't break anything) and you'd risk people setting unreasonably low cache sizes and ruining the app experience.
When you're running out of space, Android should clear out caches as it needs to free up storage. Unless you're running into space issues (or general app issues), you generally shouldn't be clearing caches. If you still have a few GB of storage available, u used cache space isn't harming anyone and clearing it will only make apps download the content at a later point.
Thank you.
I have an old model samsung. There is not much free space, and the cache of some applications grows to 1-2 gigabytes per hour of operation (for example, the ibisPaint app).
Also, in some other applications, a large amount of cache is accumulated. I don't know how the cache clearing mechanism should work in these applications, but after a few days I have to clear everything through the application menu, which is inconvenient.
Most things like this come down to resources. You have a finite amount of development resources and this is likely way down the list of features. Especially as there's already a button to do it manually.
All features have to be planned, designed, implemented, tested and released. None of those steps are free.
Chances are the development resources are being spent elsewhere on more important features.