Hermit freed 6GB on a Pixel 10 Pro by replacing native apps with web shortcuts

A Google Pixel 10 Pro owner with 128 GB of storage found himself running out of space, mainly due to 74.39 GB of downloaded music he was unwilling to delete. Instead of removing music, he began replacing native apps with lightweight web shortcuts using the Hermit app.

While Android's standard browser feature lets you create home screen shortcuts to web pages, Hermit offers several advanced capabilities. The app opens websites in a sandboxed browser designed to keep browsing fast and private, and it provides controls to remove distractions.

The user reported that replacing Facebook and Messenger with a web shortcut freed approximately 1 GB of storage. To create a web app, for example, for the Technology section of The Guardian, you open Hermit, tap "Create," select "Create Your Own," and enter the URL. After that, you can customize the icon, enable full-screen display, and activate an ad blocker.

Hermit's settings include a "Lite Mode" that disables image loading and JavaScript to speed up performance on slower devices. There is also a night mode, font size adjustment, and notification management — notifications arrive even when the site is not open.

By replacing native apps for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Spotify Web Player, Google Maps, Google News, Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, WordPress, Dropbox, Slack, Trello, Asana, Evernote, and many other services, the author freed 6 GB of storage. The Hermit browser itself takes up about 10 MB, while each web app uses between 0 and 3 MB — in contrast to native apps, which can weigh hundreds of megabytes each.

Hermit is available on Google Play for free with ads, as well as a paid ad-free version that adds features like offline reading, custom scripts, and automatic night mode switching.