HACKER Q&A
📣 f154hfds

Why do Android apps take up so much disk?


My phone warned me today that it was running low on space. After looking through my Downloads and pictures for a bit I decided to clean up apps. I don't really use many apps on my phone which is why this wasn't my go-to in the first place.

The below numbers are just app storage (I imagine binary size on disk?):

Chrome (for reference, reasonable) - 187 MB

Capital One - 91 MB

Storage - 78 MB

Digital Secure (no idea what this is) - 69 MB

Email - 66 MB

Calendar - 28 MB

Contacts - 22 MB

Clock - 21 MB

Calculator (for reference, reasonable) - 1.7 MB

So I don't work in the mobile space - can someone explain to me why these (mostly stock) apps take up so much space on disk? How come my stock Clock app is 1/9th the size of Chrome?

  👤 toast0 Accepted Answer ✓
String localization files can't be compressed unless you manage strings outside the normal Android string management; that can make a big difference.

Then you might have images for lots of different phone sizes, and maybe native libraries for different architectures.

And then there's lots of library bloat. My barely does anything, doesn't intentionally use any non built-in libraries, fairly small app takes 8 MB, I'd mark that as something close to the minimum size, although you calculator app is much smaller.

👤 giantg2
I'd imagine some of it is functionality that you dont see behind the scenes, like syncing, or features you don't use. I would also imagine that they contain ads, tracking, etc if they came from the carrier's build (like Verizon). I have some some small apps, and they are easily under a couple MBs.