Thread by @emergetools

Good question @VishalMalvi_ ! Here's what's going on behind the scenes of the @gmail iOS app 👇

Here are the biggest chunks of the app

Main app target - 225 MB
Plugins - 99 MB
Dylibs - 46 MB
Localizations - 130 MB 👀

The Localization size might shock people, but its a frequent problem in iOS

When downloaded, iOS apps contain all languages that an app supports, whereas on Android, a user will only download the languages they need

This is *one* of the reasons that Android apps are typically smaller than iOS

If you're interested in a deep dive in localizations and want to know how they can be optimized, well we have the thread for you 🤓

https://x.com/emergetools/status/1610700661984739328

For the plugins (99 MB), most the size is coming from the ShareExtension at 70.5 MB

As far as optimizations go, one of the more interesting ones comes from the sheer number of files in Gmail

There's over 20k files in the app, 17k of which are under 4 kB. In iOS, the minimum file size allocation is 4 kB, so having many small files causes unnecessary size bloat. Gmail could save 56.4 MB by moving their small files to an Asset catalog

(again a reason why iOS apps are bigger than Android apps 🤷‍♂️)

Small files are actually something we've covered in depth before in the @CandyCrushSaga app + the difference in iOS vs. Android
emergetools.com/deep-dives/can…

FWIW, it seems like all the popular mail apps on iOS are big, but Gmail takes the cake 🎂

Gmail - 544.2 MB
Microsoft Outlook - 320.5 MB
Yahoo Mail - 300 MB

Here's a link to the original tweet, thanks to @SwiftDev_UI for tagging us!

https://x.com/VishalMalvi_/status/1810710008197272049

Here's the link to our Gmail analysis, there's more goodies if you want to investigate 🔎
emergetools.com/app/example/io…

For people wondering what tools we used 🫣

https://x.com/emergetools/status/1811137949494563067