Android × App Size
Android App Size
We track 33 Android App Size case studies from 22 engineering teams. Google, Microsoft and Farfetch write about it most. Many posts also cover App Startup and Modularization. The posts run from 2017 to 2026. The newest is from March 2026.
Android App Size articles 1–30 of 33
Enabling R8 optimization at scale with AI-assisted debugging
Grab's Android team cracked a 6-year problem that stumped multiple attempts: enabling R8 optimization across 9 million lines of code. One engineer led the charge, and AI was the secret weapon.
Project Butter: A Journey for App Performance Improvement
Gojek's Android app was taking 14.35 seconds to launch. With 500+ modules and millions of lines of code, something had to change.
Use R8 To Shrink, Optimize, and Speed Up Apps
Ben Weiss from Google reveals the single most impactful, low-effort change you can make to Android app performance. Reddit saw 40% faster cold startup and Disney+ cut ANRs by 25% with one configuration tweak.
Improve App Performance With Optimized Resource Shrinking
Johan Bay from Google just dropped a game-changer for Android app size. Apps sharing resources across form factors are seeing 50%+ size reductions with one configuration change.
Preparing Apps for 16KB Page Size Devices
Dan Brown from Google Play just dropped a requirement that'll affect every Android app targeting Android 15+. Starting November 1st, 2025, your app must support 16 KB page sizes or risk breaking on next-gen dev...
How We Reduced the WINK+ Android App to Less Than 10MB
A solo Android engineer at WINK+ crushed their APK down to under 8MB while competitors bloat past 20MB with fewer features. Here's the playbook.
Why is there so much obsession on app size reduction?
Why do engineering teams obsess over shaving megabytes off their apps? A Reddit thread reveals the hidden costs of bloat.
The What, Why, and How of Mastering App Size
Spotify's mobile apps generated 930+ petabytes of network traffic in 2022, equivalent to 65,000 tons of CO2 emissions. Their solution? A comprehensive app size management system that's both environmentally cons...
Glance TV Optimization Part 1: Shrinking APK Size by 65%
Glance TV's engineering team faced a brutal challenge: their Android TV app was 20.6MB and eating 515MB of RAM. Here's how they fixed it.
Keeping Up with Android App Size Growth
Square manages hundreds of mobile engineers in a monorepo, all contributing to apps that must stay under Google Play's 150 MB limit. How do they prevent app bloat at scale?
Android App Performance and Optimization
70% of users expect apps to launch in 3 seconds. 63% will abandon yours if it takes more than 5.
Mercado Libre Android app is on a diet: Dynamic Features
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.
Swiggy App on Diet
Swiggy slashed their Android app size by 22.6% in just one day. Here's how they did it without the usual complexity.
Nuestra aplicación Android está a dieta: ¡Dynamic Features!
Rodrigo Pintos from Mercado Libre reveals how they tackled a critical problem: keeping 120M active users from uninstalling their app due to storage constraints. Their solution? Putting their Android app on a di...
Our Android App Has Been Eating but Shedding Weight
Zomato's Android app was 23MB to download and hogging up to 700MB of cache. Their platform team decided to put it on a diet while still shipping new features.
Building m.uber: Engineering a High-Performance Web App
Uber built a web app that loads in 3 seconds on 2G networks. Here's how they made it smaller than a typical image file.
Hermes Engine Becomes React Native Default
React Native just made a massive default change that could speed up your app launches and shrink your bundle size. Here's what the benchmarks show.
Introducing Ruler: Our Tool for Measuring Android App Size
Spotify just open-sourced the tool that helped them slash their Android app size by 9%. Here's why app size matters more than you think.
Superpack: Pushing the limits of compression in Facebook’s mobile apps
Meta's Superpack compression tech achieves what traditional tools couldn't: keeping app size in check while developers ship code at massive scale daily.
Project Bonsai
Grab's Android app had 4 million lines of code and was bleeding users. Google's research showed every 6MB increase costs 1% of conversions.
Reducing Android app size in practice at LinkedIn | by Chao Zhang | Microsoft Mobile Engineering | Medium
LinkedIn reduced their Android app size by 27.5MB through aggressive optimization. Here's how they did it without compromising features.
Measuring Android App Size in CI
Microsoft SwiftKey's team knows that reducing app size once isn't enough. The real challenge? Keeping it small with every code change.
App Size Matters II
What if I told you a single 15MB increase in your app size could cost your business $1M annually? Farfetch's mobile team did the math, and the numbers are eye-opening.
App Size Matters I
Gonçalo Alvarez from Farfetch drops a hard truth: your bloated app is costing you users, installs, and market share. Here's why app size is a business problem, not just an engineering one.
Managing App Size for Super Apps
Hendro Riyadi from Bukalapak reveals how his team slashed their super app size by 35% while shipping new features in parallel. In emerging markets where users have limited data plans and older devices, this was...
App Size Reduction at Microsoft SwiftKey
Microsoft SwiftKey slashed their Android app size by 50% and boosted install conversions. Here's the playbook they used to get there.
Android Jetpack Benchmark: JSON Parser Performance
Mootaz Ltaief from OLX Engineering put four popular Android JSON parsers head-to-head using Jetpack Benchmark. The results reveal a brutal tradeoff: the fastest parser costs you 1.1 MB of app size.
Engineering Uber Lite
Uber's main app hit 60MB and struggled on older Android devices in emerging markets. So they built something radically different.
Android App Bundle: Distribution and Size Optimization
Dmytro Khmelenko breaks down how Android App Bundle reduced their app size by 20% without changing a single line of code. Here's how Google's 2018 feature actually works under the hood.
Reducing APK Size: A Journey to Smaller Android Apps
Dmytro Khmelenko shares how a job candidate's pointed question about their 63 MB APK sparked a complete optimization overhaul. The results? A 62% size reduction that every Android team should study.