How to Reduce Android App Size

Everyone is concerned about the App size, hence social media company like Facebook offers dual apps in the play or app store. One with minimum functionality is termed as liteApp whereas, on the other hand, companies like Uber, Instagram etc has also adopted this feature.

According to a recent study, there is an inverse kind of correlation ship between the size of the application and the number of people who download that application. There is a 1% drop in the number of users who download apps from play store when the size of the app is increased by 6 MB.

Let’s focus now what can be done to handle the App size.

• ProGuard: Consideration of ProGuard as a tool to remove the unused java code. This will help to get eradicated of the junk code and thus overall decrease the size of the APK bundle.
• Play Services of Google: Versions later from 6.5 and above has the privilege to selectively compile the required Google Play service APIs into your APK. To envisage an example here, your app only needs Google Fit and Android Wear APIs, just swap the below line in build.gradle file:

compile ‘com.google.android.gms:play-services:8.4.0’

With the below lines

compile ‘com.google.android.gms:play-services-gcm:8.4.0’
compile ‘com.google.android.gms:play-services-wearable:8.4.0’

• Wipeout Debug information: It is strongly recommended to verify that all the debug related information is being removed. This is to be well-thought-out as application never uses this information and neither this debug information is useful to users. Thus, debug information would additionally reserve the space and affect the size of your application.
• Optimum Utilization of Resources: On mobile, reusing the existing information is considered to be the optimum way of development. To have an even experience in scrolling RecyclerView or ListView aid that supports. Furthermore, with the practice of reuse the final size of APK is also compressed. Think of the various UI aspects where the code can be reused so that the APK size is not compromised.

Scrutinize Media Formats: If your application deals with high-quality media formats such as Audio, Video and Images then you can reduce the size of your APK by implementing the use of various media formats.

• Images: JPEG gives out high-quality image whereas on the other side it does consume a lot of space; hence shift to PNG format which is considered appropriate for artwork and textures.
• Audio: Use of WAV format is strictly prohibited and one should opt for AAC audio. Android aids with a sound pool API which would help application to utilize compressed streams of audio without affecting the latency at a high rate.
• Video: Ensure the video is according to the target device and it is recommended to use H264 AVC format.

Android Go: This is dedicated to the devices that have RAM less than 1GB. Users have access to play store, but Google play store highlight those apps which are optimized for that targeted device. Hence, one should also consider this option to ensure that apps are covered in a global market with various categories of users.

To create an Android Go app developers need to bundle APK with same package name along with signing certificate but this APK will have a unique version code.

The above were some of the tips and tricks that can be taken into consideration to reduce the size of APK. Get your application sleeker and slim so it can take less space and numbers can be increased on downloads.

Final Thoughts:

Reducing Android app size is key to improving user experience and boosting downloads. By using ProGuard, optimizing media formats, and leveraging Android Go, developers can create lighter, more efficient apps. These optimizations in Android App Development enhance performance and accessibility across devices, leading to better user retention.