Large-file support (LFS) is the term frequently applied to the ability to create files larger than either 2 or 4 GiB on 32-bit filesystems.
In many implementations, the problem was exacerbated by treating the sizes as signed numbers, which further lowered the limit to 231 − 1 bytes (2 GiB − 1).
While the limit was quite acceptable at a time when hard disks were smaller, the general increase in storage capacity combined with increased server and desktop file usage, especially for database and multimedia files, led to intense pressure for OS vendors to overcome the limitation.
[1] This switch caused deployment issues and required design modifications, the consequences of which can still be seen: The usage of the large-file API in 32-bit programs had been incomplete for a long time.
An analysis did show in 2002 that many base libraries of operating systems were still shipped without large-file support thereby limiting applications using them.
[10] Apple stopped developing 32-bit Mac OS versions in 2018 delivering macOS Mojave only as a 64-bit operating system.
[14] The shift towards 64-bit started in 2014 when all new processors were designed to a 64-bit architecture and Android 5 ("Lollipop") was published in that year providing a fitting 64-bit variant of the operating system.
[17] As app developers concentrate on a single compilation variant, many manufacturers started to require Android 5 as the minimum version by mid 2019, for example Niantic.
When hard disk drives reached a size of 2 terabyte (around 2010) the master boot record had to be replaced by the GUID Partition Table which uses 64-bit for the LBA numbers (logical block address).