Strategies to reduce Android APK size

This document describes a few strategies that can be used to reduce the resulting APK size when using the Mapbox Android SDK.

1. Use ProGuard

ProGuard, even without obfuscation, will remove unused Java code from your code and its dependencies.

2. Drop architectures you don't need

The Mapbox SDK ships with 6 architectures:

./arm64-v8a/libmapbox-gl.so
./armeabi/libmapbox-gl.so
./armeabi-v7a/libmapbox-gl.so
./mips/libmapbox-gl.so
./x86/libmapbox-gl.so
./x86_64/libmapbox-gl.so

Each of these files add up to the resulting APK. If, for example, your app doesn't need x86 support, you could drop x86 and x86_64 and save some space. See "ABI splitting" below for details.

3. ABI splitting

This is a feature that lets you build an APK file for each CPU, only containing the relevant native libraries. This process is described in the Android Studio Project Site.

If you distribute your app via Google Play, you can benefit from this approach through the Multiple APK Support distribution feature.

Next

The Mapbox team is actively looking at other ways to reduce the SDK size (for example).

If you have questions or any other ideas, please get in touch with us.