How Microsoft Measures Android App Size in CI
Original post Measuring Android App Size in CI
Article Summary
Microsoft SwiftKey's team knows that reducing app size once isn't enough. The real challenge? Keeping it small with every code change.
The Microsoft Mobile Engineering team built an open-source CI extension that automatically measures Android app size changes on every pull request. It works with both GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps pipelines.
Key Takeaways
- Tracks 5 key metrics: APK size, install size, dex files, resources, and native libs
- Cross-platform compatible across Windows, Linux, and Mac CI runners
- Generates markdown summaries showing size deltas for each PR automatically
- Available free on GitHub Marketplace and Visual Studio Marketplace
The extension prevents app bloat by catching size regressions before they reach production, making size monitoring a standard part of code review.
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What This Article Covers
App size at Microsoft SwiftKey kept creeping up over time. Without regular checks, code changes would gradually make the app bigger, which hurt how many people downloaded it and came back to use it.
Praveen Pendyala's team built an open-source CI extension for GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps. It automatically tracks app size changes across five metrics on every pull request: APK size, install size, dex files, ARSC resources, and native libraries.
The extension posts a markdown summary of size changes to each PR so developers can spot problems before shipping to production. This keeps app size discipline built into code review on Windows, Linux, and Mac CI runners.
This page summarizes “Measuring Android App Size in CI” by Microsoft, published Feb 2, 2021. All credit for the original work goes to the authors.
