When you uninstall an app, does everything go?

[Jazmac]

I notice my L9 is getting low on space so its time to liquidate some of the lesser used apps on my phone. I'm finding that a bit of a daunting task in itself since there is no way to see what app occupy what amount of space. Anyway, I dropped a bunch of apps it doesn't seem to reflect in my free space so my question is, does uninstalling apps remove everything or just the app? If not, I might be looking at a factory reset...something I seriously don't want to do.

 

[rbrunner]

All goes

Everything is removed.

 

[Dave Blake]

Everything is removed when the app is removed including the cache files. You might need to do a soft reset to see the memory change.

 

[jimski]

Well, removing an app is supposed to remove everything. But I have had a few apps that "remembered me" after uninstalling and soft resetting, and then reinstalling. Just like the way iHeartRadio can keep WiFi running, even after closing the app, there are programming glitches that may keep stuff lingering. No way to know for sure.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

 

[Dave Blake]

Do you recall what apps you are talking about? It should be the done like a sandbox when you dump the app it should be like cleaning out a sandbox everything goes. If it didn't do that then you should contact the developer.

 

[Jazmac]

Do you recall what apps you are talking about? It should be the done like a sandbox when you dump the app it should be like cleaning out a sandbox everything goes. If it didn't do that then you should contact the developer.

Good point but at the rate of apps I need to get through, I might be looking at a mass mailing. The one reason I won't install Google Chrome on my desktop is because it leaves bird droppings in hidden folders that continue to serve google my whereabouts even after I uninstall it. That little feature I'm sure is by design. I'm hoping the developers are required to remove everything rather than some good faith stuff.

 

[rbrunner]

The OS cleans, not the app

... there are programming glitches that may keep stuff lingering. No way to know for sure.

It's not the program that does the cleanup, but the OS. Because of that, no app "glitch" whatsoever can lead to things staying around that should not.

And according to all that I know about the architecture of WP, the cleanup is not a complicated, but rather simple process - which means that the probability of bugs in WP itself when cleaning up is pretty low.

I have read in other threads that many cases of such mysterious "remembering things" of removed and then re-installed apps could be traced back to things stored server-side, not on the phone itself: Some server component recognized the same user or the same phone coming back and could send settings or other info to the app on the phone.

 

[jimski]

When I had access to the registry (pre-Mango) I got a chance to look at the sandboxed app file structure, with a folder for each app, and sub-folders for settings & data. I know I have experienced this more than once, and don't believe it was something server side (possible though). Will be sure to point it out if I notice anything.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro