When Android Marketplace was first launched in 2012 and with the growing rise of brands manufacturing Android device, people’s dependency on their Android mobile for doing day to day jobs increased. Nowadays people use their smartphone for paying bills, doing taxes, shopping for groceries, etc. Because of this, the APK size of individual apps increased a lot. For new developers launching their apps, making it popular among the customers is going to be a problem. Because without any proper review or rating, customers will not spend a lot of data on downloading a single app. Let’s discuss 7 ways by which you can reduce your APK size which will keep the same functionalities and increase the conversion rate.
Use Android App Bundles
While developing a new app, the developer must be concerned about its responsiveness. The app should work properly on all devices. This means, a lot of extra lines of media queries which will subsequently increase the APK size. The Android team made it easier for the developers by introducing the aab format. By releasing your app in the Android app bundle, developers will be able to reduce the APK size by at least 35%.
Use Dynamic Feature Modules
Sometimes, your app may consist of more than one critical functionalities that increase the APK size. On the other hand, the user may not need all the functionalities at once. In that case, you may separate the functionalities and make them available as downloadable components. Whenever the user needs any such functionality he or she can download it on demand.
By Offering Instant Apps
For people who are using a device with low storage, it becomes impossible to use the high-end apps because of low physical as well as device memory. You can offer your applications as standalone and lightweight APKs which comes in the form of instant apps. That means users can load the apps on demand. Thus, your app will become popular among users with a restricted data plan or a device with low configuration.
Get rid of Unused Code
Changing functionalities or requirements is a common headache for all developers. You may have developed functionality that contains a few thousand lines of codes and later got it commented because of a changed requirement by the client. This adds in unnecessarily increased app size. Before publishing any app, check the code and remove all the attributes, fields, methods or classes that you are no longer using. You can either do it manually or use any code shrinker tool or plugin.
Shrink Large Sized Media files
If your application has a number of audio, video or large sized images, you will require to compress them since media files take up a lot of space. Let’s take images as an example. If your project is using minSdkVersion 18 or above, the PNGs, BMPs or JPEGs can be converted into WebP format. WebP can keep the same image clarity and resolution while considerably reducing the file size. The same thing can be done for audio as well as video files.
Use APK Analyzer to Examine the APK
Often, the developer becomes unsure regarding how the APK became so large sized. Well, there is a solution. The new APK analyzer that comes with Android studio can help you to go through the different files and arrange them according to size, which will let you find out where exactly you should focus more to reduce the code.
Android GO – The New Kid in the Block
To keep up with the user demand and growth of companies like Oppo and Vivo, the demand for budget Android devices are on the rise. Companies are manufacturing devices after Google released Android Go, an Android version designed to provide a great experience on low configured devices. Since lightweight apps are highlighted on the play store of Android Go, as a developer, you should focus on reducing your APK size so that your app gets listed for Android Go users as well. Users can check for the APK size of the app before downloading it on their mobile device from third-party APK sites like AndroidCrew, APKMirror, APKPure.
That’s all from our side. Hope you will find this article helpful in guiding you to reduce your APK size while keeping the functionalities intact. Do let us know if you know about any other foolproof way to reduce your APK size.
