We live in an age of app overload, where users are installing fewer apps and using the ones they have installed less again, but what if you could access an app without having to download and install it?

That’s the idea behind Android Instant Apps, a new service announced by Google, Inc. at their I/O conference Wednesday.

Described as an “evolution in app sharing and discovery,” the new service enables Android apps to run instantly, without requiring installation.

Instant Apps is able to show content from an app without the app being installed by using deep links that pull the content requested from within the app out, allowing users to see it instantly.

Google is pitching the functionality as being handy to users when shopping online or wanting to make a quick payment through an app found in the Play Store. For example, a user may have been looking to buy a digital camera, but upon having found one they wish to purchase it requires an app. With Android Instant Apps the app can be instantly opened, without installation, to make the purchase.

The good news for Android App developers is that Android Instant apps uses the same APIs and source code as a standard app, so all a developer needs to do is to update their existing app to make it compatible, a process that can take less than a day.

“You modularize your app, and Google Play downloads only the parts that are needed, on the fly,” Google says in its product pitch.

Try before you buy

The idea of app overload has resulted in users not only installing fewer apps than during the boom times following the launch of apps on the iPhone in 2008, but they’re also using the apps they have installed far less, with the majority of users only using 1-5 apps daily, and 6-10 in an entire week.

That trend is not going to stop; as Steve Jobs famously said “there’s an app for that”, but the problem is that there are now millions of apps for every single thing you can possibly think of.

Android Instant Apps delivers the opportunity to expand the audience of an app by delivering access to the app without the need for a user to install it; yes, they might not necessarily become long-term users, but the opportunity to install the app remains, so another way of looking at it is a try before you buy/ download style service as well.

The last piece of good news: Android Instant Apps isn’t restricted to the latest version of Android either, and works with Android installs from 4.1 Jelly Bean upwards.

Image credit: Google.