Mercado Libre Android app is on a diet: Dynamic Features
Article Summary
Rodrigo Pintos from Mercado Libre reveals how they're tackling a massive problem: keeping 120 million active users happy while their app keeps growing. Their solution? Put the app on a diet.
Mercado Libre's Android team faced a classic dilemma: adding features meant bloating app size, which kills install rates and user retention. In 2018, they turned to Google's Dynamic Features to download code on-demand rather than upfront. This is part one of their implementation journey.
Key Takeaways
- Dynamic Features lets users download only the app features they actually use
- Three delivery modes: install time, conditional, and on-demand downloads
- Smaller install size directly improves conversion rates and prevents uninstalls
- Google's App Bundle handles dynamic delivery through com.google.android.play.core
Mercado Libre is using Dynamic Features to reduce app weight while serving 120 million users, letting them download features on-demand instead of all at once.
About This Article
Mercado Libre's app kept getting bigger even after the team tried to shrink it with obfuscation tools and optimized images and XML files. With 120 million active users, keeping the app lightweight became a real challenge.
Rodrigo Pintos's team turned to Google's Dynamic Features and Android App Bundle in .aab format. This let them deliver features on demand, so users could install only what they needed through the com.google.android.play.core dependency.
The app now works for people with limited storage space. Users stopped uninstalling it because of size constraints, and more people completed the installation. Installation conversion rates improved, and users got a better experience by downloading only the features they actually use.