How many apps can be installed on an Android device?

Question

How many apps can be installed on an Android device? Is there any limit in number? Or whether it depends on RAM/Storage ?

Answer 1

In the source code of Android M that you can find here, is this statement:

/**
 * @hide Range of uids allocated for a user.
 */
 public static final int PER_USER_RANGE = 100000;

In this line of code, it states that a user can have one hundred thousand UIDs.

However there is a conflicting information. You know that root UID is 0 and system UIDs start from 1000. Normal user apps start from 10000. This interval defined for user apps' UID numbers is also stated here as:

• FIRST_APPLICATION_UID has the constant value of 10000 (0x00002710)
• LAST_APPLICATION_UID has the constant value of 19999 (0x00004e1f)

Therefore, first UID that will be given to a user app will be 10000, and last one will be 19999. Therefore, it states that a user can have ten thousand apps.

So, which one is correct? I think this might explain. Before 4.1.1 LAST_APPLICATION_UID was 99999, allowing ninety thousand user apps as the limit. However, this is for user apps while PER_USER_RANGE doesn't specifically say so and therefore probably includes all UIDs from 0 to 99999. After 4.1.1 LAST_APPLICATION_UID was reduced to 19999 but PER_USER_RANGE was left untouched.

So for pre-4.1.1 versions, the limit is ninety thousand user apps and for 4.1.1 and after it is ten thousand user apps.

That is of course the limit that Android accepts. But in most cases, your storage will be full before you can reach such numbers.

Answer 2

Theoretically you can install as may apps that fits on internal storage. In reality it's significantly lower due to an Android bug/OS limitation which may cause other apps, and the system itself to crash if the list of app "information" is larger that 2MB:

• https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=93717
• https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=69276

Answer 3

Citation needed

You can install as many apps as you want to the device but...

If your like me and use a good Chunk of your internal storage just for apps and you have a 8GB phone or tablet as the Android Operating system will take a chunk as well and leave you with about 3-5GB of available storage you are limited to the devices storage capabilities but a good rule of thumb is to have 128Mb per GB of storage for device usability without getting random crashes from stable apps and not usable situations for apps that are not so much stable. It is also a good idea if you have a Micro SD card slot in the device(s) you have the apps on and send them to the SD card by going in settings and tapping on

• Apps
• Tap or scroll to On SD Card
• Select the app in question and tap Move "Move" will possibly cut up the app (depending on device and or app requirements) and send all data including app data(again depending on device and or app requirements) to the SD card or not be available at all to move. If you have a device that has no SD card but supports OTG(On The Go storage it will not be possible to have the apps sent to the OTG and be usable whenever you want due to the Mount protocol as it is not the correct mountable hardware be aware that not all data can be sent to SD
• assuming that you can make it this far with the device, wait till the grayed out Move is pressable again then repeat till complete Please note that some apps that can move to SD may work better on the devices internal storage

Also be aware that the more apps you have the more possible resources (RAM)(Random Access Memory) can be used in the device in question as let's say you have 12 apps that request a refresh in the background (like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter to name a few) the less RAM can be found for other operations and causing ANR(App Not Responding) messages and drain the battery faster than expected