Android × Build Time
Android Build Time
We track 59 Android Build Time case studies from 41 engineering teams. Cash App, Dropbox and Glovo write about it most. Many posts also cover Modularization and Testing. The posts run from 2013 to 2026. The newest is from October 2026.
Android Build Time articles 1–30 of 59
Amper Is Now the Kotlin Toolchain: Moving to the Kotlin Blog
Joffrey Bion announces a major evolution: Amper isn't going away, it's becoming something bigger. The experimental build tool is now the Kotlin Toolchain, marking a shift toward a unified entry point for Kotlin...
Tuning Android build nodes for maximum throughput
Wealthfront's Android team cut their CI build times by rethinking how Gradle uses resources on AWS EC2 instances. Turns out, more workers doesn't always mean faster builds.
Scaling developer experience: How we improved Android Studio in a large monorepo
Grab's Android team turned 35-minute IDE syncs into a 2-minute flow. Their secret? A clever Gradle trick that required just three lines of code and zero workflow changes for 100+ engineers.
Update Your Projects for AGP 9
Márton Braun from JetBrains drops a critical update: Android Gradle Plugin 9.0 just landed with breaking changes that will affect every Kotlin Android project. Time to update your build configs.
Core/Core-Impl Pattern: Build-Performance Superpower of DI & Gradle
Your modular Android app is building like a monolith. One shared :core module is killing your build times, even when you change a single private implementation detail.
Cash Android Moves to Metro
Egor Andreevich just shipped a DI framework migration across 1,500 modules serving tens of millions of users. The build speed improvements? Nearly 60% faster incremental builds.
How Pinterest Cut Android Testing CI Build Times by 36%+
Pinterest's Android CI builds were bleeding 9 minutes per run because one slow test shard held everything hostage. Their fix? Stop counting tests and start counting seconds.
Migrating from KAPT to KSP: A Complete Guide to Kotlin's Future
Chamod Lakmal from PickMe reveals how switching annotation processors can cut Android build times in half. If you're still using KAPT, you're leaving serious performance gains on the table.
Debugging Android Connectivity Issues with Metro Bundler
Ever spent hours debugging why your React Native Android app won't connect to Metro during development? You're not alone.
Our Buildkite Brings All the Devs to the Yard: (Re)Building Reddit Mobile CI in 2025
Reddit's mobile team had zero professional CI experience. Then they cut build times in half and transformed developer happiness.
The Journey to Faster Android Builds: How Slice Slashed Build Times
Ankit Sharma from slice reveals how his team reclaimed 167 hours of developer time annually by tackling Android build performance head-on. Their systematic approach turned a productivity blocker into a competit...
How We Decomposed Tinder's Monolith
Maxwell Elliott and Connor Wybranowski from Tinder turned what seemed like a 12-year project into a 6-month sprint. Their secret? Letting the compiler do the heavy lifting instead of manually untangling 150,000...
Design Android build variants for Multi-Tenant
Piyal Madushanka from PickMe Engineering tackles a problem every scaling mobile team faces: how do you manage multiple regional apps without drowning in build configuration chaos?
The Next Chapter in Swift Build Technologies
Owen Voorhees from Apple just dropped a bombshell: the build engine that powers millions of App Store apps is now open source. This changes everything for Swift developers working across platforms.
Code Optimization with ProGuard and R8 in Android
Enes İğneci from Teknasyon Engineering breaks down why your Android app might be bloated, slow, and vulnerable. The fix? Two powerful code optimization tools most developers underutilize.
How we sped up Android and iOS builds by 68% on CI
Duolingo's engineers were stuck waiting 50 minutes for every CI build. That's hundreds of hours wasted every week across the team.
Android SDK Release Update
Matthew McCullough just dropped a bombshell: Android is ditching its annual release cycle. If you're building for Android, your entire 2025 planning timeline just changed.
Slashing Lead Times by 30%: The Impact of Using Explicit Types in JVM
alexxozo from Glovo's engineering team discovered that a single line of code change slashed their build time by 30%. The culprit? Java's type inference struggling with large Map definitions.
Evolution of Translations Management for Android
Yaroslav T from Revolut reveals how managing translations for 6 apps across 330 modules and 33 languages evolved from a simple library to a custom Gradle plugin. The journey took 7 years and countless iteration...
Accelerate Your Android Development: Essential Tips to Minimize Gradle Build Time (Part II of II)
Rolgalan from Glovo's Mobile Platform team reveals how they slashed Android build times through hardware and JVM tuning. Most teams are leaving massive performance gains on the table by ignoring these fundament...
Accelerate Your Android Development: Top Techniques to Reduce Gradle Build Time (Part I of II)
Rolgalan from Glovo cut Android build times by 75%—from 1 hour down to 15 minutes. Here's how they did it, and why most teams are leaving massive performance gains on the table.
From 30 Minutes Down to 10: Taming our Monolith's CI Build Times
Cash App's monolith CI builds were taking 30 minutes at p50. Developers were stuck waiting through multiple build cycles just to get a green merge.
Supercharging Continuous Integration with Gradle
Paul Hundal and Pablo Baxter from Square reveal how they slashed CI analysis time by 80% on a monorepo with 5,000+ modules. Their secret? Getting creative with Gradle's internals.
Using Gradle Enterprise to Detect Configuration Regressions in an Android Gradle Build
Premise's mobile team caught a sneaky 3x build time regression that only showed up in CI. Here's how they hunted it down using Gradle Enterprise.
Gradle Incremental Test Runner
Swiggy's Android team was stuck in a painful cycle: rebasing PRs, waiting hours for full test suites to run, then doing it all over again. One frustrated engineer decided to fix it over a weekend.
Android Studio Electric Eel Release Celebration
Roger Hu from Square reveals how Android Studio Electric Eel slashed their sync times by 60%. For a team managing 3,000+ Gradle subprojects, that's not just faster—it's 1,600 hours of developer time saved annua...
Saving 5,400 Hours a Year: Developer Productivity with Gradle
Paul Hundal from Square's Mobile Developer Experience team reveals how one Gradle feature saved their Android team the equivalent of watching 60 football games worth of waiting time. The ROI? $1.1 million annua...
How We Sped Up Zipline Hot Reload
Cash App's team turned a frustrating 20-second hot reload into a blazing 2.7 seconds. Here's how they systematically hunted down every millisecond.
Automating Android Build Benchmarking with Gradle Profiler
Doni Winata from Traveloka's Android Infra team reveals how his team automated build benchmarking to catch performance regressions before they hit production. For projects with 300+ modules and 15-20 minute bui...
How We Cut the Build Time for Our Android App by 95%
Zomato's Android team was losing 7 hours of productivity every single day just waiting for builds. A 10-person team, 20 builds per day, 2+ minutes each time. The math was brutal.