Here’s why your smartphone storage is disappearing so fast — popular productivity apps grew 10x in size in a decade, with Asana and Trello the major culprits, but video games remain the biggest data hogs

• Phone apps are getting bigger, and storage isn’t keeping up
• Social media, games, and productivity app sizes having increased
• While apps include many more features now, they’re also much bigger

If you’ve been wondering why your smartphone storage seems to fill up faster than ever, you’re not alone. The days when 16GB of storage was more than enough are long gone, and apps that used to take up single megabytes of space now consume hundreds of MBs, sometimes even gigabytes.

A recent study by TRG Datacenters tracked the growth of popular apps over the past decade, revealing how productivity apps, communication tools, navigation apps, and games have ballooned in size.

Some have seen their storage demands increase by as much as 1000%, with certain types of data expanding even more dramatically.

From lightweight to heavyweights

Productivity apps have become essential for modern workplaces and have seen significant growth in their data requirements, and the study revealed popular workplace apps such as Asana and Trello have expanded by 1000% over the past decade.

In 2014, Asana required only 5MB of space, but by 2024, it had grown to 55MB. Similarly, Trello surged from 10MB to 100MB in the same period. These increases are attributed to the rise of remote work and the need for these apps to offer more functionality.

As project management software evolves, they have integrated features like real-time collaboration, video conferencing, and cloud storage, which naturally demand more data. Other productivity tools like Slack and Zoom have ballooned by 500% over the same period. In 2014, Slack and Zoom only consumed 10MB of space, but by 2024, they now require 60MB.