Android studio apk size vs download size

It then chooses the configuration that yields the smallest compressed output. You can use vector graphics to create resolution-independent icons and other scalable media. Using these graphics can greatly reduce your APK footprint.

Vector images are represented in Android as VectorDrawable objects. With a VectorDrawable object, a byte file can generate a sharp image the size of the screen. However, it takes a significant amount of time for the system to render each VectorDrawable object, and larger images take even longer to appear on the screen.

Therefore, consider using these vector graphics only when displaying small images. For more information on working with VectorDrawable objects, see Working with Drawables.

Do not use AnimationDrawable to create frame-by-frame animations because doing so requires that you include a separate bitmap file for each frame of the animation, which drastically increase the size of your APK.

Instead, you should use AnimatedVectorDrawableCompat to create animated vector drawables. Reduce native and Java code There are several methods you can use to reduce the size of the Java and native codebase in your app. Make sure to understand the footprint of any code which is automatically generated.

For example, many protocol buffer tools generate an excessive number of methods and classes, which can double or triple the size of your app. A single enum can add about 1. These additions can quickly accumulate for complex systems or shared libraries. If possible, consider using the IntDef annotation and code shrinking to strip enumerations out and convert them to integers.

This type conversion preserves all of the type safety benefits of enums. If your app uses native code and the Android NDK, you can also reduce the size of the release version of your app by optimizing your code. Two useful techniques are removing debug symbols and not extracting native libraries. Using debug symbols makes sense if your application is in development and still requires debugging. Use the arm-eabi-strip tool, provided in the Android NDK, to remove unnecessary debug symbols from native libraries.

After that, you can compile your release build. When building the release version of your app, package uncompressed. Disabling this flag prevents PackageManager from copying. When building your app using Android Gradle plugin 3. Your APK might contain content that users download but never use, like additional language or per-screen-density resources. To ensure a minimal download for your users, you should upload your app to Google Play using Android App Bundles.

If you're not publishing your app to Google Play, you can segment your app into several APKs, differentiated by factors such as screen size or GPU texture support. When a user downloads your app, their device receives the correct APK based on the device's features and settings.

This way, devices don't receive assets for features that the devices don't have. Content and code samples on this page are subject to the licenses described in the Content License. App Basics. Build your first app. App resources. Resource types. App manifest file. Device compatibility. Multiple APK support. Tablets, large screens, and foldables. Build responsive UIs. Build for foldables. Getting started. Handling data. User input. Watch Face Studio. Health services.

Creating watch faces. Android TV. Build TV Apps. Build TV playback apps. Help users find content on TV. Recommend TV content. Watch Next. Build TV games. Build TV input services. TV Accessibility. Android for Cars. Build media apps for cars. Build navigation, parking, and charging apps for cars. Android Things. Supported hardware. Advanced setup. Build apps. Create a Things app. Communicate with wireless devices. Configure devices. Interact with peripherals. Build user-space drivers.

Manage devices. Create a build. Push an update. Chrome OS devices. App architecture. Architecture Components. UI layer libraries. View binding. Data binding library. Lifecycle-aware components. Paging Library. Paging 2.

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Learn more. Apk size vs Download size Ask Question. Asked 2 years, 8 months ago. Active 2 years, 8 months ago. Viewed 2k times. Improve this question. Salman Hameed Salman Hameed 61 4 4 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Hoppeduppeanut Hoppeduppeanut 5 5 gold badges 20 20 silver badges 24 24 bronze badges. Enable this in your app-level build. Remove the localized resources which are not needed by using resConfigs.

The following snippet shows how to limit your language resources to just English and French:. As discussed, having unused language resources only swells the apk size. Hence it is important to remove unused files and resources. Remove any debug library you have in the app. It can be done by using debugImplementation while building testing debug apk. R8 shrinking is a process in which we reduce the amount of code of our application and by doing so, the APK size automatically gets reduced.

R8 does most of the work as Proguard. Why do we need to prefer it? The reason is it works with Proguard rules and shrinks the code faster while improving the output size.

To learn more about using R8 to optimize apk size, you can refer our MindOrks article on the same. Whats better finally than understanding and implementing these steps in our applications to deliver an optimized apk to our customers! We hope that this article has been of some help in understanding different methods to reduce app size in Android.

Android Online Course for Professionals. Dheeraj Sree 6th August How to reduce APK size in Android? Share this blog to spread the knowledge.