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) 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

https://x.com/emergetools/status/1810790280922288617

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?

ask and you shall receive 🫡

🧵 figuring out why @telepass is almost half a GB 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

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 👀

When we tweet about RN apps that have room for improvement, we often used the General Motor apps as an example

WELL NO MORE 👏👏👏

🧵 How General Motors shrunk app size by ~70% We wrote a deep dive on the four GM apps roughly a year ago

In it, we detailed how they could reduce EACH app by ~200 MB

https://x.com/emergetools/status/1764750546496606506

What's truly wild here is that at the beginning of 2024, the T-Life app was 37.3 MB

It's now at 475 MB

🧵 How to 10x your app size
General breakdown

Dynamic Frameworks: 195 MB
Main app binary: 159 MB
Asset catalog: 69 MB

fwiw, each of those are bigger than the entire app was ~14 months ago 🕵

Got a few requests for this!

Let's break down the @binance crypto app 💰 So there's two versions of the app we're looking at, the US version and another version shipped under "Binance Switzerland"

From what we saw, the US app is only for the US, and every other country gets the app from Binance Switzerland, probably due to different regulations

We got multiple tags to analyze the Tapo @TPLINK app for being over 760 MB 👀

Let's see what we find in here 🤭🔎 Total install size is 764 MB

204.6 MB
171.5 MB frameworks
45.4 MB main app target
27.7 MB plugins
a whole bunch of assets and localizations assets.car

It's always the banking apps huh 🤦‍♂️

Figuring out why the @UBS banking iOS app is almost 800 MB 🥲 First up, an overview

Frameworks - 336 MB (43%)
Main app target - 180 MB (23%)
Plugins - 55 MB (7%)

But what really sticks out is all that red, which signifies duplicate files ❌

Customer: “Why is this app so big?”

Company: “Very cool features & lots of them + you have no way to check what I’m saying”

Not today corporate. Not today.

🧵 Why @ouraring is ~450 MB This might be a bit long, so TL;DR

Oura is just duplicating a bunch of images, json, & localizations. The size isn’t b/c it’s “powerful with many features”

Here’s what the size actually is 👇

Assets: 207.8 MB
Localizations: 49.2 MB
JSON: 35.5 MB
Audio: 26.5 MB

Another day, another tag to analyze a large app AND it's another Flutter smart home app 😬

Let's take a look at why the @EufyOfficial home security iOS app is 637 MB 👇 A quick breakdown 🔎

- 378 MB of frameworks (59%)
- 137 MB of (21%)
- 86 MB of localizations (13%) Assets.car

In 2024, @DraftKings decreased app size by 65% and improved app launch by +50%

Let’s take a look at what they did

🔬 Migrating from Xamarin → Native The main app binary went from 97 MB → 11 MB (the project also changed its name from DK.Gaming.iOS → Sportsbook)

Aside from that, much of the size decrease came from completely removing all dynamic-link libraries (.dll, used in Xamarin projects)

We got tagged to analyze this app on Thre*ds so we're posting it here too 🤭

🧵 Let's take a look at why the @intesasanpaolo iOS app is 699 MB 😳 A quick breakdown 👇

448 MB (64%) dynamic frameworks 🫠
72 MB (10%) main app target
74 MB (11%) of assets

We've got to stop meeting like this 😅

🧵 taking a look under the hood of the @Yelp iOS app Install size weighs in at ~318 MB, but ~4 MB of that is the watch app ⌚️

High-level breakdown:

130 MB dynamic frameworks
47 MB assets
34 MB main app target binary
26 MB localizations

For reference, @GoogleMaps weighs in at ~296 MB (7% smaller)

Did someone say app size?!

Here's why @thetrainline iOS app is so big 🧵 Total install size is 342 MB

Basic breakdown:

115 MB of Plugins
109 MB main app target binary
34 MB sqlite file 👀 (more on this later)
23 MB Dynamic Frameworks

The rest is assets, localizations, misc. Let's start with the Plugins 🔌

Do you want a paid wallpaper app from @MKBHD?

Maybe not? Well do you want to know how its made 🤓

🧵 Looking inside the new @Panels_art app, starting with ads 🎤 Ads have been a big topic

Panels is using Google Ads in both iOS (GAD) & Android

On Android, is the largest dependency in the dex com.google.android.gms.internal.ads

Oohhoho this one looks fun!

Let's take a look at why the @SantanderUK iOS app is at a whopping 613.3 MB and how 35% of it does nothing for the user 🧐 Right off the bat, it looks like most of the app (587.6 MB) is dynamic frameworks

Dylibs let you share code between targets, but are larger than static frameworks b/c static let's the compiler strip dead code. It's likely that Santander doesn't need ALL of those to be dynamically linked

Ok so I guess we're talking toothbrushes today 🦷

🧵 Why @OralB is 290 MB + looking at an even bigger toothbrush app

(tysm for all the tags 🥲)
For OralB, 233 MB / 290 MB (80%) is coming from its asset catalog. Most of the assets are PDFs of different toothbrush models

The largest is `Sonos_M9_rose` at 7.8 MB. Most PDFs aren't even the whole toothbrush, its just the handle and buttons 🧐

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 👀

Another day, another "How is this app so big tweet" 🤓

This time its the @DJIGlobal iOS app, which comes in at 1 GB A lot of the comments speculated that the app was large due to assets & while there are 155 MB of .mp4 video files, the bulk of the size is coming from ML models

Yes, we can be that someone 🤓

Looking into the @smartthings iOS app

https://x.com/austboston/status/1789247681849962517

Most the app is made up of dynamic frameworks - 633 MB of dylibs

The 4 largest dylibs take up ~350 MB

TVController2: 95.3 MB
SmartThingsCore: 91.1 MB
SmartThingsOnboarding: 90.8 MB
UnityFramework: 73.5 MB

... no clue what this app that "does nothing but tell me if I left the fridge door open" is using Unity for, but it's probably super important and needs to be there...