Selective application and data offloading

One or more computer storage media storing computer executable instructions which when executed by one or more processors of a computing device that includes a write filter implement a method for selectively offloading applications from the computing device, the method comprising:

• periodically monitoring which application a user of the computing device is using by determining which application has focus on the computing device;
• based on the monitoring, maintaining a usage time of each of a plurality of non-critical applications that the user has used over a period of time, each usage time representing how long the user has used the respective non-critical application during the period of time by defining how long the respective non-critical application has had focus on the computing device during the period of time;
• assigning a rank to each of the plurality of non-critical applications based on the usage time and a size of the respective non-critical application;
• detecting that free space available on a disk of the computing device has fallen below a defined threshold;
• in response to the detection, identifying a first application of the plurality of non-critical applications that has been assigned a highest rank;
• and
• offloading the first application by causing a copy of an install location folder of the first application to be stored in a remote repository, deleting the install location folder of the first application from the computing device, and causing the write filter to delete the install location folder of the first application from the disk.

A method, performed by a service that executes on a thin client that includes a write filter, for selectively offloading applications from the thin client, the method comprising:

• periodically monitoring which application a user of the thin client is using by determining which application has focus on the computing device;
• based on the monitoring, maintaining a usage time of each of a plurality of applications that the user has used over a period of time, each usage time representing how long the user has used the respective application during the period of time by defining how long the respective application has had focus on the computing device during the period of time;
• detecting that free space available on a disk of the thin client has fallen below a defined threshold;
• in response to the detection, using the usage time and a size for each of the plurality of applications to assign a rank to the respective application;
• identifying one or more of the plurality of applications to be offloaded, each of the one or more identified applications being identified based on the rank assigned to the respective application, each of the one or more identified applications comprising a non-critical application;
• and
• offloading each of the one or more identified applications by:
• causing a copy of an install location folder for the respective application to be stored on a remote repository;
• deleting the install location folder for the respective application;
• and
• invoking commit functionality of the write filter to cause the install location folder for the respective application to be deleted from the disk.