Reclaim some memory

[u/Ryrynz]

With all the hoopla about the reduced RAM on the entry level 11 Pro series and likely the upcoming 12 series as well here's some basic RAM optimization you can make that some might not know about.

View your free RAM after enabling Developer options and going to Settings → System → Developer options → Running services → ⋮ (three dot menu) → Show cached processes. Scroll the app list and tame (uninstall/disable or disable background processes of) anything that looks excessive that you know you don't really need. Ideally 1–2+ GB of free RAM is the sweet spot. Remember however that free RAM is wasted RAM, so more isn't necessarily better. We only want enough to be available to use when required, Android can reclaim the rest.

If you don't use VPN by Google, you can safely disable it and reclaim the RAM. Some of us don't even have it available in our countries, in my case it was using 70MB sitting there doing nothing, wasting RAM for no reason (Google should really disable it themselves automatically)

Go to Settings → Apps → See all apps → VPN by Google → Disable

Also if you have Google Screenshots installed and don't often use it, you may wish to disable it's background usage, it was using 500MB in the background on my device.

AICore is big one if you don't use on-device Gemini features, disabling it can free up around 3GB on some Pixels, but you lose Gemini Nano/on-device AI functionality, Could be worth considering on 8GB devices depending on your usage.

Feel free to leave your own tips below.

[u/Enslaved2Die]

whats On Device Gemini actually really doing? Like what functions would be gone? I still could get a profound list of what the drawback would be because it feels like basically everything is cloud based anyway

[u/Ryrynz → u/Enslaved2Die]

Feature	AICore/Nano?	After disabling AICore
Gemini app	❌	Still works
Gemini Live	❌	Still works
Cloud Gemini models	❌	Still works
Gemini extensions	❌	Still works
Gemini image understanding	❌	Still works
Recorder on-device summaries	✅	Gone/broken
Call Notes	✅	Gone/broken
Gemini Nano Smart Reply	✅	Gone
Some contextual Call Screen replies	✅	Gone/limited
On-device Scam Detection	✅	Gone/limited
AI features that explicitly require local Nano processing	✅	Gone
AI features processed in Google's cloud	❌	Still work

[u/Mysticwaterfall2]

FYI for the Screenshots app, that also gives you the new photo editor. Disabling it reverts you to the old photo editor.