The Google Play Store Is Making It Easy to Remotely Uninstall Apps From Your Other Android Devices
If you have multiple Android devices, you may want the experience to be the same on all of them. If you download a useful app on your phone, chances are you also want that app on your tablet, or even your Chromebook. Likewise, if you no longer find an app useful on one device, you probably won’t want to keep it on your other devices either.
However, it can be annoying to uninstall the app from each of your devices individually. Maybe you use the app on your smartphone and decide to delete it, but forget to delete it on your other devices. It may stay on your tablet or Chromebook for a while before you realize you want to delete it. It’s annoying, but in extreme cases it can also be risky: you might be trying to remove an app that later turned out to be malicious, but if it’s still present on your other devices, it could end up causing you harm. Although there is a way to remotely uninstall apps on other devices, it has been buried in the “Manage apps and devices” section and is not that simple to execute.
The latest Play Store update aims to fix this issue. As spotted by Android Authority, with version 48.8, the Play Store now allows you to simply uninstall apps from your other devices using your smartphone. Once you run this version of the Play Store (and future versions), you can visit an app’s Play Store page and look for a new “Available on more devices” section. Here you will see all your connected Android devices, with options to “Uninstall” or “Install” the app on those devices. There’s no need to dig into your settings anymore.
What do you think of it so far?
This feature should help keep your Android ecosystem a little tidier and organized, but it’s not the only improvement the Play Store is rolling out. Starting next year, Google will start penalizing apps that consume too much power. The Play Store will remove these apps from visibility pages or add an alert to the apps’ Play Store pages, warning users that these apps are consuming more battery than necessary.
