You know, many years ago, I was a banker. Every year, we went through a couple of audits. They were always nerve-racking. Not due to anything done disreputable but because you knew those people were pros at dotting the “i” and crossing the “t” to the Nth degree. Because of a conversation Jim Britt and I had on WSVA a while back, today I am going to talk about audits you need to do yourself.
I am talking about audits for computers, smartphones, and/or tablets. There are many reasons to audit your software. For space, speed of your system, power consumption, security, privacy, and more.
Let us look at space, speed, and power. And it may seem obvious, but the first thing you need to do is think. Consider the apps on your devices. Take your phone and look at the apps you installed to try out to see how they worked. You used it for a day, week, or maybe only once and then forgot that it ever existed. Or you used an app for several years, they changed the system and you dislike it. You stop using it. There may be applications pre-installed on your computer, phone, or tablet you will never or have never used. Bloatware, software you just do not need.
Make a list; on paper, in your head, anywhere you want. The list will have all of those unneeded or unused apps. Then set about deleting them from your system. It is like going through your closets at home and getting rid of things you have not used or worn for four years and tossing them out.
This may take time, but if you can cut out all the unneeded apps on your phone and tablets, it will be worth it. Depending on how many, you can remove battery life between charges can be better. Space on those smaller systems can be important. Clear up space by removing those apps. Then you will have room for more apps to try (and then remove the unneeded ones) and more room for pictures. Of course, pictures can always be saved to the cloud.
If you are a regular reader of Gray Haired Tech, you know me and I am not an iPhone fan; however, I am an iPad fan and we have two in our home. I will say that they have a feature that I appreciate. Apple has an app in their devices which will automatically uninstall apps you do not use often.
You can easily get to it. Go to Settings, App Store, and then cut on Offload Unused Apps. It will run without guidance from time-to-time and clear out those unused apps. I respect that feature but (this is just me) I do not trust the computer to remove things from my devices, even though you can easily reinstall them from the App Store if you want them back later. I want to make those decisions, not an intelligent program.
The same goes for your computer, except space and power consumption are not much of a worry. But for speed, the fewer the better in all cases.
