Flutter release apk size is very large in flutter sdk version 1.20

[umair-ilyas]

I am making a very simple app with 15 screens. And when i run this command flutter run --release. My release apk size is 26.2mb, which is very large.

My flutter doctor:

Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):
[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 1.20.2, on Linux, locale en_US.UTF-8)
 
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 30.0.1)
[✓] Android Studio (version 4.0)
[!] Connected device
    ! No devices available

! Doctor found issues in 1 category.

My pubspec.yaml file contain these dependencies:

  cupertino_icons: ^0.1.3
  flutter_svg: ^0.18.0
  provider: any
  image_picker: ^0.6.7+4
  menu_button: ^1.2.1
  pin_code_fields: ^5.0.1
  flutter_pdfview:
  path_provider:
  http:

These files takes the more space. Is there any way that we can reduce the release apk size. For apps like this, the size is very large. In my previous flutter sdk version 1.17 the release apk size of 30 screen app is not more than 15 mb.

[siddharthsaini]

26.2 mb release apk covers all the screens.
Compile your code to app-bundle instead of apk and then use bundletool after "flutter clean" to extract the bundle, look into the exact file size for each display since the new release 1.20 could've included more android screens which would obviously increase the size of the release app.

Link to bundletool -> https://github.com/google/bundletool/releases/download/1.1.0/bundletool-all-1.1.0.jar

Example code for extraction ->
java -jar "D:\Siddharth\bundletool\bundletool-all-0.15.0.jar" build-apks --bundle="D:\Siddharth\flutter-demo\build\app\outputs\bundle\release\app-release.aab" --output="D:\Siddharth\flutter-demo\build\app\outputs\bundle\release\apk.apks" --ks="C:\Users\Siddharth.android\debug.keystore" --ks-key-alias=androiddebugkey

Bundletool will extract your .aab bundle to .apks which can be extracted easily using 7zip.
Here you'll find device specific apks with their specific apk size.

[markusaksli-nc]

Hi @umair-ilyas
With a flutter create default project, the result of flutter build apk --release is 15.1 MB on version 1.17.5 and 15.3 MB on both the latest stable 1.20.2 and latest master 1.22.0-2.0.pre.36. It could be that for a larger, more complex production app that this discrepency will get larger. However there was a massive amount of changes between these two versions.

In any case, please follow the advice of @siddharthsaini and as stated in the flutter tool:

You are building a fat APK that includes binaries for android-arm, android-arm64, android-x64.
If you are deploying the app to the Play Store, it's recommended to use app bundles or split the APK to reduce the APK
size.
    To generate an app bundle, run:
        flutter build appbundle --target-platform android-arm,android-arm64,android-x64
        Learn more on: https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle
    To split the APKs per ABI, run:
        flutter build apk --target-platform android-arm,android-arm64,android-x64 --split-per-abi
        Learn more on:  https://developer.android.com/studio/build/configure-apk-splits#configure-abi-split

I'm closing this issue since this isn't the intended build method for release and you are using third-party plugins. If you are still overshooting your targets with the mentioned advice, let me know and I'll reopen this issue.
Thank you

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