Measuring Android App Performance with Profileable Builds
Article Summary
Yi Yang from Google reveals why your Android performance measurements might be completely wrong. Debug builds can show 2-3x worse performance than what users actually experience.
Google's Android team explains profileable builds, a feature that enables accurate performance measurement without the overhead of debug mode. The article demonstrates how traditional debug profiling misleads developers and provides step-by-step guidance for implementing profileable builds in Android 10+.
Key Takeaways
- Debug builds disable compiler optimizations, creating performance gaps vs. release builds
- Profileable tag enables CPU and native memory profiling with minimal overhead
- Android Studio Flamingo adds one-click profileable profiling via 'Profile with low overhead'
- Safe for production: Google Maps and other first-party apps ship as profileable
- Only works on Android 10+ devices with restricted profiler features for security
Profileable builds let Android developers measure real-world performance accurately without the 2-3x slowdown that debug mode introduces.
About This Article
Android developers couldn't measure performance accurately because profiling required debug builds. Debug builds disable compiler optimizations, so timing measurements don't match what happens in production release builds.
Google added the profileable manifest tag in Android 10. This lets developers profile CPU and native memory on release builds with very little performance cost. Access is limited to timing-critical features like Callstack Sampling and System Trace.
Release builds with profileable enabled run at nearly the same speed as unmodified release builds. Developers can now measure real app performance without the misleading numbers that debug builds give them.
