Optimization Reference

Publishing as universal APK instead of Android App Bundle. AAB enables automatic configuration splits, reducing download size by 15% on average and up to 50% with dynamic features.

DEX bytecode not optimized by R8. Enabling code shrinking, tree shaking, and obfuscation typically reduces app size by 10-65%.

Identical files appearing multiple times, detected via SHA-256 hashing with smart filtering to separate structural duplicates from actionable ones.

Images that would be significantly smaller in HEIC format. PNG-to-HEIC conversion typically saves 80-90%, JPEG-to-HEIC around 50%.

Images stored as PNG or JPEG that would be significantly smaller in WebP format. PNG-to-WebP conversion typically saves 26% lossless or 25-34% lossy vs JPEG.

Images outside Asset Catalogs that miss app thinning. All scale variants (@1x/@2x/@3x) ship to every device instead of just the one it needs.

Native libraries (.so files) shipping unnecessary CPU architectures. Filtering to ARM-only or using App Bundles can reduce native library size by 50% or more.

Individual files over 1 MB that could be compressed, resized, or delivered on demand. Covers images, audio, video, data files, and ML models.

Unused resources (drawables, layouts, strings) shipping in production. Resource shrinking combined with locale filtering can reduce app size by up to 50%.

Hundreds of tiny files wasting space due to APFS 4 KB block allocation. A 100-byte file still consumes 4,096 bytes on disk.

Development-time files (headers, module maps, Swift modules, READMEs) shipping in production builds. Also a security concern per OWASP guidelines.

Binary contains debug symbol tables that inflate app size by 30-42%. Common after Xcode 14 removed automatic server-side stripping.

Dynamic frameworks embedded in the app that are never loaded at runtime. Each adds 0.8-3 MB of dead weight.

Raster PNG icons shipped at multiple density variants instead of vector drawables. A single vector XML file replaces 5-6 density-specific PNGs, saving 70%+ per icon set.