Bit of an odd question but..
I am currently building an app, it will essentailly be a hotel listings directory with a few frills.
Having never made an app like this before I have suddenly found my self with the following question but cannot find the answer...
Is the there a limit the number of file you can package the app with, ie submit to itunes...
The reason I ask is potentially I will want to submit my app with a minimum 700+ images each in their own directory resulting in 1400+ files (assuming a directory is a file). I can get the size of the images to fit the 'over the air' max app download size.. but cannot find if there is a limit ot the number of files you can submit...
There is no as such limit for the number of files to be uploaded. However, as you mentioned it would be better to download your files from the app after installation.
This would help you reduce the binary size.
This is for iOS.
Your app usually comes in one .apk file. Your resources included. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APK_%28file_format%29 So its size is what matters.
You may want to double check the architecture of your app, it sounds like you want a webservice.
Related
I want to migrate my android app (~40 MB of the base apk) that uses an .obb file (~70 MB) to the Android App Bundle format. I know for sure that the resources inside the .obb file will be updated less frequently than the base part. Therefore, there is no need for the users to download a full app (40 + 70 = 110 MB) on each app update but only the changed part (~40 MB).
What can I use after the migration to provide the same experience (update only changed part) to the end users?
Ideally, these unchanged resources should be accessible through the AssetManager like they are located within the assets directory.
For now, I found the Play Asset Delivery feature that allows moving some resources to a separate module to deliver it to devices at different times (install time / right after the download / when needed).
I've implemented an install time module logic and tested it via the internal + alpha tests. Throughout the testing, I found out each app update forces Google Play to download the full app (~110 MB) instead of the changed part (~40 MB). I do not know whether this situation will change when I release an app to the "available for everyone" track and I could not find the information about it either. Therefore, the answer "an install time module will not be redownloaded if unchanged; here is the documentation describing this: <link>" is fully acceptable and is one of the most welcoming ones.
tldr; Yes, in production, the download size will be smaller.
When you publish an app to production (whether APK or App Bundle), Play will generate patches of your app between this version and the previous versions of your app, so that your users only download the difference between the two versions. The consequence is that if you don't modify the content of a dynamic module, users will still receive updates for the unchanged modules but the download size will be very small.
Note that in practice, it is possible that the first couple of users downloading the update may still get the full size.
I have an Android project with 3000 photo's that needs to be available offline. When I include all the photo's in the build, the build fails. When I remove some of them, the build succeeds.
I have put the photo's in two dynamic modules that download at install time.
Here is the gradle scan for reference: https://scans.gradle.com/s/nn6eo527qvge6
Is this purely a size issue and if so, how do I get around that?
Is this purely a size issue
Probably.
how do I get around that?
Start by moving your photos out of res/drawable-xxhdpi-v4/ and into assets/ and adjust your code that consumes the photos to match.
Then, see what the resulting APK size is and compare it with the size limits for your intended app distribution channel (e.g., 100MB limit for the Play Store). If you exceed that limit, you will need to work through alternative approaches (e.g., APK expansion files).
To expand on CommonsWare's answer, I think the way you should do this is not by using Dynamic Modules but by using asset delivery. It's kinda "marketed" as a "for games" thing, but it's not limited at all by that.
The idea behind asset-delivery is that you have a pack of assets (images in your case) that you need for your app to function.
This "pack" of assets can be requested at install time, or later "on demand". All this is confusing because Dynamic Delivery sounds very similar. However, as stated at the top of the asset-delivery page, they use Different APIs.
In all honestly, I haven't used Asset Delivery, so take it with a grain of salt, and keep the considerations at hand, for example (and I quote):
If the download is larger than 150 MB and the user is not on Wi-Fi, the download does not start until the user explicitly gives their consent to proceed with the download using a mobile data connection. Similarly, if the download is large and the user loses Wi-Fi, the download is paused and explicit consent is required to proceed using a mobile data connection.
With the fantastic help of Tim on this thread Controlling Android app with bluetooth mouse/ presenter I added bluetooth remote control of my application. After finishing this, I noticed my apk file went from 175k all the way to 1711k - 10 times larger! I have implemented the bluetooth changes on a test application without seeing any change in file size so I am not sure what caused this. I did have some kind of Eclipse problem in the middle of this and had to do a rebuild to get the source to run again so maybe that had something to do with it.
Searching for file size change here and on Google gives me questions of people who want to make larger files to hold more stuff, not my question. I can't seem to find relevant answers.
The application has no graphics, pdf's, or other files of any size at all. It just reads some GPS stuff, does some math, and displays the results as text.
Is there some way to get the file size back down? Is there an Eclipse option? This is my first real (non test) application and it is finished and working but I am concerned with the file size increase.
You can check the contents of apk file easily. An apk file is simply a zip file with different extension. Just replace .apk with .zip and unzip it. Then diff the contents with your previous .apk file and find out what file makes the difference.
I encountered a similar problem with the APK size. One way to check out which resources are the culprits is to 'Open Editor Log' in Console.
Some helpful explanations can be found here:
Unity build project game 2d to apk with huge size because textures
https://docs.unity3d.com/432/Documentation/Manual/ReducingFilesize.html
Hey, I have a lot of strings data, so I put them into Strings.xml..
The problem is that String.xml now is 5 mb big! So the .apk becomes big.. If I make on the first lunch of my app download the Strings.xml from a server, is it possible to replace a blank one that I put into the .apk with the one that I download after the app installation? Or is it bad to have the Strings.xml so big?
Resources are read-only, so you can't replace them.
If you're not using the localization features (-en, -it, -de ...) and you can make your app download only the strings you need (provided you don't need always all of them), I would do that if it's worth it.
However, even if 5mb for a text file is a lot, I don't know if there are actual drawbacks, and in the end it will get compressed when in the apk.
Short answer: you can't replace a file which is embedded into the apk,
also note that during the building stage, each xmls are converted into a
binary representation.
Since I don't know nothing about your app I can't tell if is bad to have
a so big string.xml. maybe I'll take a look at the performance and at the
memory consumption.
I'm creating an app with 3 different languages. Every language contains a separate audio file (8 mb each).
Is it possible to split/export the project to 3 different .apk files prior to release on Market? I really do not want to put everything in one .apk due to the 24+ mb file size.
I can see a few options...
Manually build each one, release them as separate products in the Market in each language, e.g. "MyApp English", "MyApp Francais" etc. You could limit which countries see each one, to reduce confusion.
Same as above, but use Ant to automate the Android build process, so you can have one project for the app, but easily build a version in any language. Ant is quite involved, but I'd that in about a day you could learn enough to get an Ant build script running for your project. Android has built-in command line tools to help, so it'll create an initial Ant script for you (look at the "android" command line tool).
Create a single app, and when it starts, ask the user to confirm the language they want, and then start the download. Ideally you'd download a little bit initially to allow the app to work, and download the rest in the background so they don't have to wait. 8MB is quite a lot of data, so beware people will data expensive data plans so I think it is polite to always ask their permission for the download.
If it were me I'd probably lean towards the last option as it's simpler to build one app, and with sucha big download, the user needs to be in control of the process. Bear in mind many people wouldn't download an 8MB app if they knew beforehand it is that big.