Building a Better Instagram App for Android
Article Summary
Instagram cut their Android app startup time in half and reduced APK size by 50%. Here's how they did it.
In 2014, Instagram's Android team completely rewrote their app to serve 1 billion+ users across thousands of device types, from budget phones on slow networks to flagship devices. Engineer Tyler Kieft shares the technical decisions behind their dramatic performance improvements.
Key Takeaways
- Flat design reduced startup time by 120ms (10-20% faster) by cutting assets from 29 to 8
- Two-step singleton initialization: create objects immediately, defer heavy work to background threads
- Converted News webview to native, eliminating duplicate networking stacks and thread contention
- Asset tinting reused shapes with runtime colors, cutting total app assets in half
- Galaxy S5 startup dropped to 0.5 seconds, Galaxy Y to 1.5 seconds
Critical Insight
Instagram achieved 50% faster startup and 50% smaller APK by ruthlessly eliminating work at launch through lazy loading, asset reduction, and strategic native rewrites.
