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Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

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Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

#181

Post by lenerdenator »

lxgr wrote: post #50
Aperocky wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is the question though, the question deserved to be asked. And Gmail deserve to be shamed for shipping almost a gigabyte of stuff for a mailbox. Wouldn't be surprised if they accidentally/intentionally built the whole youtube client in there.

I think this might be closer to the truth than you might think. Due to the absence of (cross-app) shared libraries on at least iOS, developers often end up building big company-internal libraries that then have to be shipped with all of their apps. Tree shaking isn’t perfect, and the result are these > 0.5 GB monstrosities.

For what it's worth, Outlook for iOS on my iPhone has an executable that weighs in at 368.8 MB.

Google needs to trim some stuff down.

Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

#182

Post by nickff »

MisterTea wrote: post #170
MBCook wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps like that often contain (many?) short high resolution videos to show how to do an initial connection or something that can take up a ton of space. Gmail has no such excuse.

800 MB High resolution video explaining how to connect a microphone is still bonkers. There's no justifying this garbage.

MIMO also manages many different DJI cameras (badly).

Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

#183

Post by pfortuny »

bdhtu wrote: post #139
HPsquared wrote: post #2

The article doesn't answer the question. The content can be summarised as "The Gmail app is 700 MB!"

It's not just Gmail. Most of the popular apps on iOS are literally 10x bigger than their Android versions. It's hard to find a popular iOS app that's smaller than an Electron app.

Then you look at the desktop backgrounds folder in your Mac and say:

WHAT THE FUCK!

There are 4k videos there...

Just unbelievable.

Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

#184

Post by simonw »

kccqzy wrote: post #105
crazygringo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

130 MB for localization? At 50 languages that would be 2.6 MB/language. If we assume an average 50 bytes per string and another 50 for an identifier, that's 27,000 strings . That doesn't seem right. Localization feels like it should add a few MB. Not over 100. (Plus shouldn't it be compressed, and locally uncompressed the first time a language gets used?)

Localization doesn’t just mean string translations. Apple platforms give you the freedom to redo the UI to fit the language. For example, parts of System Preferences (not sure about Settings) would look completely different in languages with long words because the original design for English simply didn’t fit. The translators rearranged buttons to make the text fit.

Thank you! I've been wondering about exactly this, your explanation makes complete sense.

Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

#185

Post by NelsonMinar »

On Android vs iOS, it's worth noting Android apps are smaller than iOS apps. The details are complicated but this report says after installation Android apps take up about half the space as iOS. https://www.safetydetectives.com/blog/app-storage-usage-rese...

One specific complication: Apple's store reports install size, Google Play reports compressed download size. https://www.emergetools.com/blog/posts/are-android-apps-real...

Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

#186

Post by reactordev »

chasil wrote: post #151
reactordev wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you build a Swift UI in go?

There is a single mention of Swift on the developer page that I posted. "Note that you can also invoke GoHelloGreetings from Swift by importing Hello." @import Hello // ... let msg = Hello.GoHelloGreetings("gopher")

Oh lord…

Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

#187

Post by giancarlostoro »

wolvoleo wrote: post #67
HPsquared wrote: post #2

The article doesn't answer the question. The content can be summarised as "The Gmail app is 700 MB!"

There's a few other apps that are ridiculously big. Like the DJI Mimo app. It's an app I need for my DJI Mic, to change 4 settings on it. It needs 800MB for that which is absolutely ridiculous. Also I need to sign up for an account to use it even though the Mic works completely locally and it just changes the settings over USB. It's absolutely fucking ridiculous to have an 800MB app for this and the reason is just ma…

I call it Marketing Driven Development, having lived through it at a previous job. It really sucks. They give engineers no time to breathe and do maintenance code changes.

Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

#188

Post by Forgeties79 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #67
HPsquared wrote: post #2

The article doesn't answer the question. The content can be summarised as "The Gmail app is 700 MB!"

There's a few other apps that are ridiculously big. Like the DJI Mimo app. It's an app I need for my DJI Mic, to change 4 settings on it. It needs 800MB for that which is absolutely ridiculous. Also I need to sign up for an account to use it even though the Mic works completely locally and it just changes the settings over USB. It's absolutely fucking ridiculous to have an 800MB app for this and the reason is just ma…

DJI lost the plot years ago unfortunately. They reeeeally wanted their app to be this whole bespoke platform experience thing and it’s been downhill ever since.

lol remember the Karma?

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