APK file is basically the Andriod Package application files. All the applications you download and install from the app store of your android phone are APK files. These application files are really important to run your phones.
But the thing apart from third-party APKs, there are still some APKs available in your Android system that is pre-installed in the Android system by manufacturers itself. These APK files function totally different from those APKs that you install from your android play store.
The system file APKs are there to run the Android device smoothly. Now the question that we are going to talk about today is very simple. How to reduce the APK size of Android Application.
So today I will discuss such 8 such techniques to reduce the APK size of an android application.
But at first, for those who don’t know anything about APKs, I will give a brief introduction on APK files and how they work and for what purpose.
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APK files- The Basic Concept
Basically, in simple words, it can be said that an APK is a file package that contains the compiled program and all the other parts of the Android system like resources, assets, certificates, and manifest files compressed and packaged into a single file.
Android Package or APK is a package file format used by the Android operating system. These APKs are stored and saved on your Android device by the extension of .apk. APKs are very much flexible and editable in nature.
That means that you easily customize any APK file format. As for example by an APK file, you can degrade the version of an application by uninstalling the new update. This generally needs to be done when the updated version of the application is facing some sort of problems.
8 ways to reduce the APK size of an Android Application
The reason why I chose this topic today is I saw of people are facing this problem with oversized APKs on their phones. The problem is oversized APKs takes more space on the memory allocation of your Android system. And the above-mentioned question became very frequent on the internet.
So today I took the privilege to give you the solution to your problem. In this section, I will be listing down 8 such points to reduce the size of an APK file.
1. Use a third-party software
There is much third-party software available on the internet that can help you reduce your APK size by shrinking the codes. This apps shorten the size of the APK by reducing the code footprints.
Now if you ask me among all these tools which one will be better to use, then I would recommend you to use Proguard to reduce the size of your enlarged APK.
2. Vector Drawables
After the release of the 23.2 libraries, the older versions of Android are now supporting the Vector Drawable. The android studio allow you to simply convert SVG to Vector Drawables.
So If you are reducing the APK size with Vector Drwables then you don’t have to have to worry about the different device DPIs. By this process, you will get your problem solved that is you can finally reduce the size of your APK file.
3. APK Splits
The split mechanism is a great way to reduce the size of the APK file. An APK file split will allow you to create an APK of your desired density or size.
Thus with an APK split you can easily reduce the size of an APK and you can also create an APK with a specific density and space.
4. Google Play Service
Compressing the size of APKs can also be done by using Google Play Store. With the updated version of 6.5. In the previous versions of Google Play Store, it was more difficult to keep the number of methods of your applications under the limit 65.536.
That is why in the 6.5 of Google pLay service you can individually and selectively compile google play service APIs into your application.
So that is why I mention Googe play service as a solution to reduce the size of your APK file.
5. Optimization of png images
This is also a very effective way to reduce your APK file size. Every APK file contains some PNG images as graphical content.
Now the file size of PNG images can be reduced without reducing the quality of the image or any graphical content. Now to carry out this process there are a lot of tools are available on the internet like OptiPNG or PNGCrush.
Both of these tools that I have mentioned above are enough capable tools and can reduce the APK size without compromising the quality of the image.
6. Remove all the unused resources
To carry out this process you can take the help of a tool called Android-resource-remover. This tool will remove all the unnecessary and unused resources that are reported by the Android Lint.
You can use this tool to remove all the unnecessary and unused resources from your android operating system and alongside you can also reduce the size of the APK file size.
7. Avoid all types of duplication
Duplicacy is everywhere and duplication of files in your APK can result in a larger size of APK file. The fact is, it is very important for you to understand the functions of each and every APIs included in your APK file.
If you learn this then it will be very easy for you to look for the unused duplicate API and you can right away remove the duplicate file and save yourself some space. Duplicate files can take a lot of space in the allocated memory.
8. Reuse resources as much as possible
As a mobile developer that first thing you need to learn is reusing stuff like resources are the best way to carry out the process of optimization. Reducing the same resources will help you to keep a smooth scrolling performance.
But not only that reusing can also save a lot of memory space by reducing the final size of your APK. But here the biggie is that reusing the same resources can reduce the amount of the time required for creating and developing an APK file.
Final thoughts
So now we can see that reducing the size of an APK is not that much of complex work. For those who were looking for a solution to their problem of enlarged APK file size, just follow the above-mentioned steps and you will be good to go.
I hope that this article will many of my readers. I can ensure one thing that if you follow these steps to reduce the file size of your APK file.
