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Android Tutorial: What Are Some Useful Ways To Reduce Application Size

If you are a developer, you must be thinking you are being paid for developing smart applications. Sadly, you are wrong. Think of a pilot; he tries to fly the aircraft in such a way that it can save fuel and cover maximum distance. Just like that, as a developer, you need to develop an app that is sized as minimum as possible.

Don’t you get tired of receiving the same message after spending a huge amount of data for the application you like to download and end up with getting “file size is too large” message. Usually, we lose calm and close the app. Hence, every app development company these days focuses on application size and trying to develop a lite app so that users can run it even with slow internet.

App Annie stated that with every 6MB of increase in the size of the app, chances of download decrease by 1%.

Below mentioned techniques will surely help you to develop an advanced and smooth application with less space. So let’s see the tips and tricks to reduce the size.

# Compress Your High-Quality Images

Every app developer is now focusing on improving the performance of the app while reducing the size of the app. If you have noticed, all popular apps like Uber and Facebook have released its “lite” version of their native apps. It means it consumes fewer data and runs smoothly even on old smartphones.

Whether it is images or video, HD quality is preferred. You can reduce the jpeg images without losing their quality, for which you can use various tools such as OptiPNG. These tools allow you to get the same quality of images at the same time and reduces their size too. Moreover, some software can compress the size of videos also.

Another way is image size can be reduced, and it can be converted to WebP format. This will not compromise with the quality of image or video but definitely reduce the size of it. The WebP format allows transparency, and it will provide a better compression method than PNG and JPEG.

For instance, you are using Android Studio’s version 18 and developing instacart clone, you can try shifting to WebP version for images and videos. You can convert all your graphics files without losing the original quality.

Besides, you can also use vector drawables for simple images to reduce the size and utilize the space effectively. Ultimately, the best thing is you won’t be losing the quality of the image anyway.

# Removing Dead Code

To make the application file small, you should avoid unnecessary and unused code and resources before you release it. You can delete the code with ProGuard; it has the capability of removing dead codes. It will eliminate the classes, fields, methods, and other resources from the code. After that, it checks bytecode and deletes unused codes and resources.

After all, the size of APK is directly linked to the performance of your app, and the memory it contains and the power it consumes. And keeping unused and inappropriate code will only add to the junk; hence the removal of dead code is required for your app to work faster and smoothly all the time.

Once you delete the dead code, it will enhance your app quality, and it will be easy for a developer to maintain code size.

# Upload App With App Bundle

The Android App Bundle is a new upload technique that manages all your uploaded code and resources, but you can’t generate an APK and sign up to Google Play.

It is a new service model and also known as Dynamic Delivery, uses your app bundle to generate and deliver APK so that you only need to download code to run your app.

It supports all devices and reduces the app size; hence App bundle is one the most innovative ways you can ever use. It means you no longer need to build separate APKs for different devices, and users will get a smaller version of the application. Ultimately, it will increase downloads.

Moreover, you can add and modify some features to your application and add them to your application bundle.

# Create Multiple APKs

As a common practice, programmers usually upload a single APK in the market. And that every version contains a large number of files. But, breaking a large APK into smaller parts can solve your problems.

That can be done using Android App Bundles, and you can also use ABIs to convert your large files into smaller ones.

Some applications consist of content that does not get enough downloads. For instance, add-ons, like multiple languages, are not always useful. This occupies the additional spaces in your storage and improves the performance of your app.

# Avoid Enumerations

Enums are tough. A single once can add from 1.0 to 1.4KB into the classes.dex file of an application. These can reduce the speed of your app if you have used complex frameworks or shared libraries. So you need to overcome this problem. With the help of ProGuard, you can convert the enums into integers, and your application’s size will be reduced.

Wrapping It Up

With the increasing usage of smartphones, the demand for high-quality apps is also rising day by day. Android apps are the trending technology of the present and future as well; hence you need to provide optimum user experience for survival. So by reducing app size, you can attract more people to download your app and give positive reviews. Along with the app size, there are many other factors you need to consider during the development process. If you are still confused, hire a professional development company to foster the IT needs of your business. Above are the simplest ways that you can implement while developing an android app. This will surely help you how one can reduce app size and increase efficiency. Hence, it becomes necessary for Android developers to create lightweight apps; it will increase your conversion and be useful to expand the business.

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Written by Shady Johnson

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