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Emerge Tools Profile picture
@emergetools
Jul 9, 2024 • 11 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Good question @VishalMalvi_ ! Here's what's going on behind the scenes of the @gmail iOS app 👇 Image
Here are the biggest chunks of the app

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

For the plugins (99 MB), most the size is coming from the ShareExtension at 70.5 MB Image
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 🤷‍♂️)Image
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!
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 🫣

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More from @emergetools

Emerge Tools Profile picture
Nov 4
As people love pointing out in our threads, Android apps are almost never bigger than their iOS counterpart 🧠

But sometimes they are

Looking at the most common reason using @CNN & @pizzahut 🧵
Here are the respective sizes (install size for iOS, uncompressed for android)

📰 CNN
Android: 233.3 MB
iOS: 198.23 MB

🍕 Pizza Hut
Android: 285.2 MB
iOS: 97.8 MB
Below are the treemaps for both apps

In both cases a large chunk of the app size is coming from `lib`

These apps are shipping a Universal APK to the play store vs. an AAB Image
Image
Read 10 tweets
Emerge Tools Profile picture
Sep 18
Do we know why the Tesla iOS app is 760 MB? Can it be made smaller? Does a bear...nvm

This is a fun one, b/c the Tesla app does something not many other apps do

🔬 Taking a look at Tesla's app size + exploring Image
Immediately what jumps out is that ~30% of the app is `Tesla.pck` (241.2 MB)

A .pck is a file format for bundling Godot assets (scenes, scripts, shaders, etc)

Out of all the app's that we download, this is *by far* the largest .pck included in an app Image
We can see Godot included in all of Tesla's plugins + the main app target

This is how Tesla creates 3d model interactivity in the app

(remember this b/c we'll be coming back to the plugins) Image
Read 13 tweets
Emerge Tools Profile picture
Jul 9
Exactly 1 year ago today, we had our biggest tweet ever about @gmail's iOS app size

And funny enough, Gmail's size is making the rounds again

🧵 Looking at why Gmail is ~700 MB (+ why it's increased by 100 MB in the last year) Image
Here's the original thread - would recommend checking it out for more info, but TL;DR

- Large main app binary
- Localizations
- Big share extension plugin
- Overhead from having many files in the app

Over the last year, Gmail has increased by 100+ MB

Most of that is coming from increases to the areas mentioned above

2024 → 2025
📱Main App Binary: 223 MB → 285 MB
🌐Localizations: 130 MB → 150 MB Image
Read 11 tweets
Emerge Tools Profile picture
May 2
Ok, time for a bit of a rabbit hole

...or should we say... Deere hole 🤦

🧵 Looking through the @JohnDeere apps. (Pepe Silvia warning...iykyk)

p.s. l10n = localization
Some context - we were poking around our localization data and John Deere's "TractorPlus" & "Ops Center" jumped out

🚜 TractorPlus is 412 MB - 115 MB (32%) is l10n

⚙️ Ops Center is 276 MB - 114 MB (42%) is l10n

So why did this jump out?
Firstly, apps like FedEx (160 MB l10n) or Garmin Connect (90 MB) inefficiently use localizations

@Tinder recently wrote how they used Emerge to reduce size of l10n by 95%


@Airbnb did a similar optimization - we'll link to a few 🧵s at the bottommedium.com/tinder/how-the…
Read 13 tweets
Emerge Tools Profile picture
Apr 14
ask and you shall receive 🫡

🧵 figuring out why @telepass is almost half a GB Image
For those who are unfamiliar with it, Telepass is an electronic toll collection system used primarily in Italy and other parts of Europe. Here's the general breakdown

It's a flutter app 🪽
Total install size - 457 MB
Frameworks - 417 MB 🫨
Main app target - 25 MB Image
91% of install size is due to frameworks, 293 of them to be exact

There are a number of reasons that apps would have so many frameworks, but usually it's to support complex functionality in the app, or to make the app more modular and independent for teams working in parallel
Read 9 tweets
Emerge Tools Profile picture
Mar 25
What app has added the most number of dynamic frameworks in the last 3 months?

Hint: it's an old friend of ours 🤖
It's @EufyOfficial, who we wrote about a few months ago

They've added a bunch of new frameworks, but its not just that they've added a lot that's interesting, its *what* they've been adding 👀 Image
Of the new frameworks, they've added~20 RN frameworks and a handful of Flutter frameworks

Not ideal to keep adding both RN & Flutter 🤔 Image
Image
Read 7 tweets

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