I lost a draft post in Voyager on Android while I was a few apps away doing research and looking for a photo to add to the post.

That brought to me an understanding that Android will just kill apps for memory purposes.

Then I thought back to Windows 98 and how it had a page file that would write RAM information to the hard disk and use it as RAM. It was slow af, but it worked.

So I’m wondering: it’s 2026; why is Android just killing apps instead of writing them to a much faster drive for recall when needed?

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
    3·
    13 hours ago

    Problem is that it’s not at all trivial to implement, so it often isn’t implemented.

    • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
      1·
      12 hours ago

      That’s true. But it’s also not trivial to implement an app that may have its “RAM” located on disk. It’s a complex problem with multiple solutions, and giving apps the freedom to do what they want with it is the way Android structured things.