What can I do to reduce the actuall app size of an android app?

Question

I'm currently developing an android app using the Google Maps Android API and therefore the Google Play Services.

The generated release APK (utilizing proguard) has about 20MB (depending on the target platform).

After installation the App Info from the Android settings show about 44MB. I know that the APK is compressed/zipped, but can you tell me why the installed app is so much bigger compared to the APK?

I'm not downloading any data with OBB files. And all data is stored in the internal storage.

Answer 1

The application size increases mostly because of the large images and libraries. Therefore, you have two options:

1. Check your images and icons, and if needed, reduce their sizes. If you are using large png's, you can also reduce their sizes with: https://tinypng.com/
2. Reduce your dependencies. As I understood, you are adding whole play services, not only maps.

Instead, you can use:

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-maps:11.2.0'