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Comment by supertrope | Hacker News Reader

When devices ship with 8GB of storage, average users may or may not follow system prompts to free up storage on an ad hoc basis. (This is analogous to 16GB iPhones and constantly having to free up space). More savvy users can figure out that FireTV is Android compatible and use adb as a power tool. Or just buy a different streaming device that doesn't run at 75% storage full after installing YouTube and Netflix.

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Don't even get me started on Samsung's Nexus S, which is partitioned into 1 Go "internal" and 15 Go "external" space with a bunch of apps being extremely annoying about insisting on being installed in "internal" space only...

But none of that should be necessary. Caches should be managed by the system. If they get too big the system should empty some of it.

Giving the user a prompt is a bandaid on the OS failing to do its job.

It does. But cache clearing only goes to a certain point after that it will stop you from updating apps and installing new apps, until you free up space by uninstalling an app.

That I understand. That’s a user caused issue, it’s fair to ask the user a question.

Or you could provide a feature like iOS where unused apps are unloaded automatically (if enabled).

But the user should never have to manually manage cache space.

User never has to manage cache space which has always been the case. Also your normal user cannot do that, without system level privileges. Third party apps where to able to call adb directly on FireTV which is not the case on other Android devices with GMS. In fact if you build Android with access for third party to call adb, Google will never let you pass CTS and you cannot have Google Play on it. It’s a huge misstep from security point for Amazon sell devices with adb access for third party apps.

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