Productionizing Envoy Mobile at Lyft
Article Summary
JP Simard from Lyft reveals how they replaced URLSession and OkHttp across all their mobile apps with a single networking library—and the results weren't what anyone expected.
Lyft spent years migrating their iOS and Android apps to Envoy Mobile, an open-source networking library based on Envoy Proxy. After months of rigorous A/B testing and gradual rollouts starting in December 2021, they now handle billions of daily requests through this unified solution.
Key Takeaways
- OOM crashes dropped 69.3% and app hangs fell 47.9% on iOS Driver app
- ANRs reduced by 30% on Android bike and scooter apps
- Success rates vary up to 10% across carriers with same library
- Android always uses IPv6 dual stack sockets for all connections
- Real-time stats caught 3 production incidents missed by existing monitoring
Critical Insight
Lyft successfully replaced platform-native networking libraries with Envoy Mobile across all apps, matching or exceeding previous performance while gaining unprecedented observability and cross-platform consistency.
