zlacker

500MB average seems like a gross exaggeration. I agree apps are oversize but I have maybe 2 native apps on mobile that are so large.

>>andrew+(OP)
Chase Mobile for iOS is 350MB; far from 500, but still baffling why an app would need to be that large just to show me some numbers.

Capital One is 435MB...

Garmin Connect is 518MB for some stupid reason, while Strava is half that and Gaia GPS (great app), is under 100.

>>dbtc+t
Almost certainly has to do with how the app is built. Most thoughtfully built native SDK (UIKit, etc) apps clock in well under the 100MB mark, often under half or a quarter that.

Bloat like that is usually due to unnecessarily convoluted tech stacks pulling in a list of dependencies that goes out to Mars and back, or for globally targeted apps sometimes it’s translations for everything in the app for hundreds of different languages.

>>dbtc+t
Is it? You can't easily tell with iOS apps because the container might be that big, but the app on your phone is a fraction of that. The container might contain multiple versions.

>>cosmic+21
Yeah but the native SDK sucks and isn't cross-platform, I don't blame anyone for not using it

>>frollo+U1
UIKit is fine, good even, SwiftUI isn’t fully baked yet, Android Framework definitely sucks, and Jetpack Compose is decent but needs work. Both platforms have at least one SDK that’s good to use, and personally I’d take them over fighting the extra layer of issues something like RN adds on top of the native issues that devs will encounter regardless of the SDK used.

Cross platform frameworks really aren’t the magic wand they’re sold as.

>>cosmic+g2
Cross-platform is very much not a magic wand, but it's still often easier than building the same thing in two different native SDKs, and I can see why people do it.

Disagree about UIKit, mainly cause of Autolayout, unless it's gotten reworked in the past 8 years. When I started using RN, I had zero web experience, and still it was way quicker to set up a basic UI than in the UIKit stuff I'd been doing for years. And for all that setup, Autolayout doesn't even seem to future-proof your stuff that well. An abandoned ObjC iPhone app I wrote in high school using C-style macros for layout worked perfectly fine on the newer screen sizes that broke most other apps.

I thought maybe I was stupid, but the other iPhone devs I worked with constantly had problems with Autolayout. Maybe a real expert iPhone dev won't, but it shouldn't take that.

>>frollo+D2
The thing about UIKit is that you really need to forget about the drag and drop UI editor (XIBs and storyboards). They make everything including autolayout much more painful than they need to be.

Pure code UIKit using autolayout’s anchors API is quite serviceable, and if you follow recommendations (use safe area and keyboard constraints! They exist for a reason) reasonably futureproof. The iOS apps I’ve worked on have needed very little change year to year for quite some time at this point.

>>cosmic+21
"clock in well under the 100MB mark"

But this is still incredibly ridiculously comically gross. The fact that we can afford it these days is an irrelevant seperate thing. These numbers are just unjustifiable for what most apps actually do.

>>cosmic+f3
That's true, though some will tell you the opposite. But even then, the pure code autolayout seemed a lot harder to use than HTML/CSS. The fact that so many people got it that wrong says something. Like yeah a desktop website might break on mobile, but I'm talking about a mobile screen just getting slightly longer or something.

>>Brian_+t3
Yeah, especially if I can make a desktop app under 10 MB with the same functionality and features (obviously non-Electron).

>>andrew+(OP)
The UK's new electronic visa application form app is over 200MB and it is literally only a 3 page application form. Program efficiency at its finest!

>>Brian_+t3
I mean, it scales with complexity. Naturally, well-made native SDK apps bumping up against 100MB are more likely to be highly functional, while simple apps are very small.

For a couple examples pulled from my TestFlight list, there’s a social media site reader app that’s 7.6MB and a text editor that’s 697KB. Those sizes aren’t the least bit unreasonable.

>>dbtc+t
Gaia used to be so great and I used it every day but it’s really hard to support Outside.

>>andrew+(OP)
Average, yes, probably an exaggeration. Some apps

iOS:

    wechat:          740meg
    gmail:           672
    google chat:     585
    uber:            582
    tiktok:          572
    headspace:       498
    instagram:       467
    doulingo:        462
    bank of america: 456
    capital one:     435
    expedia:         412
    linkedin:        402
    doordash:        392
    google:          379
    facebook:        365
    unitied airlines:355
    chase:           352
    google photos:   348
    line:            346
    amex:            339
    google maps:     336
    youtube:         329
    booking.com:     320
    citi:            319
    amazon music:    317
    snapchat:        316
    lyft:            307
    wells fargo:     292
    strava:          283
    twitch:          279
    rotten tomatoes: 262
    airbnb:          254
    youtube music:   245
    whatsapp:        239
    mlb:             220
    discord:         212
    tinder:          202

of course Apple doesn't list the size of their own apps like Apple Maps, Photos, Music, etc...

I am quite surprised at a few apps I know are just a webpage, because I can to go to the webpage and see it's exactly the same, are still 40meg to 80meg. I'd expect them be able to be as small as a few K. Open a webview, navigate to https://mycompany.com. The end

>>socalg+ka
I thought these couldn't possibly be right and you must be including their storage and cache usage, but I'm seeing similar reported on my iPhone. Rounded to the nearest megabyte.

   Gmail: 612mb
   Facebook: 359mb
   YouTube: 303mb
   Amex: 365mb

I'm still skeptical (or just hopeful?) that there's some storage accounting bug here, and it's including caches. I'm not in a place to plug it into Xcode right now, maybe someone else can check the actual IPAs?

edit: also, I do see Apple's own apps in mine. Music reports 39mb; Photos 791kB (lol?)

>>cosmic+U4
What are these you are listing?

>>mh-+9b
Amex being 300mb is genuinely hilarious. What does that app even do?

>>mh-+9b
its including cache + data files not just an 'APP'

my youtube is literally 10gb because I use it a lot, doesnt mean youtube is "bloated" or "heavy"

>>tonyha+Vh
I am leaving out the "data" figure in my counts. As I said, I think there's a bug/misrepresentation in the figures shown in iOS settings.

>>LostMy+Q6
Yes, the Outside aspect is annoying. Did you switch to another app?

>>jazzyp+ah
Probably doing CHIA in the background. ;)

>>socalg+ka
> uber: 582

Not to defend Uber, but there was a post here some time ago where one engineer explained why it's so large (sadly can't find it anymore): it's due to a lot of different implementations for different markets (some masks may have slight differences in different countries) and their choise to re-implement the masks multiple times.

>>mh-+Ki
they use react native maybe

>>chrisa+qo
A few different UIs don't justify hundreds of extra megabytes. We just collectively stopped caring.

>>socalg+ka
Now I understand why those 128 GB get full so quick.

>>chrisa+qo
UI definitions should add very little storage space. Different images and videos might add a lot.

>>cosmic+21
Whats the business case to invest in building these well and as small as possible?

Heck, if you are a world business and the app isn't your core value prop, whats your case for investing anything more than the bare minimum in creating your app?

>>socalg+ka
> of course Apple doesn't list the size of their own apps like Apple Maps, Photos, Music, etc...

You can find that in the phone storage settings:

    iOS:           12 G
    Keynote:      498 M
    Numbers:      482 M
    Pages:        455 M
    Clips:        213 M
    Maps:          81 M
    Watch:         70 M
    Find My:       60 M
    Music:         38 M
    iTunes U:      35 M
    Support:       34 M
    Podcasts:      32 M
    Books:         31 M
    iCloud Drive:  30 M
    Freeform:      19 M
    Fitness:       18 M
    Notes:         17 M
    Journal:       15 M
    Home:          10 M
    App Store:      8 M
    Weather:        8 M
    Mail:           7 M
    Files:          4 M
    Health:         3 M
    Measure:        3 M
    Voice Memos:    3 M
    Calendar:       2 M
    Clock:          2 M
    Safari:         2 M
    Shortcuts:      2 M
    Translate:      2 M
    TV:             2 M
    Calculator:     1 M
    Facetime:       1 M
    iTunes Store:   1 M
    Tips:           1 M
    Wallet:       934 K
    Messages:     860 K
    Photos:       791 K
    Compass:      712 K
    Camera:       635 K
    Contacts:     598 K
    Phone:        570 K
    Magnifier:    516 K
    Passwords:    213 K

There's also an "Apple Inc." listing, which appears to be "shared" between a lot of their apps which clocks in at 204M

My takeaway from having gone through the list and compared to the various 3rd party apps:

1) Apps can absolutely be smaller. Plenty of stuff in the <200MB range including things like Signal, OBD Fusion and Infuse

2) Games are often big, but there's a surprising number of "simple" apps that are larger than some of the games

3) The largest apps seem to be from companies that you would expect to be doing the most tracking of your data

4) Apple's first party app sizes probably explain a little about why they weren't in a hurry to upgrade storage sizes

>>socalg+ka
On Android, is the Gmail app actually a PWA? Saying this as Google tried to push PWA hard, but it doesn’t seem like they do it for their own stuff.

>>tpmone+L11
> Maps: 81 M

Is MapKit considered iOS or Maps?

>>ciabat+EH1
No idea, those are the numbers as reported in the settings app. I would assume it's part of the OS since it's a framework for other apps to tap into mapping functionality. For comparison Sygic is 324 MB. Waze is 170 MB, Tom Tom is 251 MB, Magic Earth is 135 MB and OSM And is 238 MB