A cloud computing system can be used to transparently reduce the storage space of an application on a client device. An application can be installed with a minimal set of application resource files. The remaining application resource files can be replaced with application resource file placeholders, which can have the appearance of application resource files but are in fact empty files. When an application requests an application resource file, an application resource file retrieval process installed on the client device can detect the difference between an application resource file and an application resource file placeholder. The application resource file retrieval process can trigger a fault in response to detecting an application resource file placeholder, which causes the client device to obtain the requested application resource file from a remote storage location, such as cloud-based storage. Additionally, installed application resource files can be replaced with application resource file placeholders.