even though I have more data than I ever use on my plan, after 15yr's exclusivly on mobile data, I reflexivly look at the size of anything before I download something, 700mb is bonkers for email, and I have started to reject many other apps, based on there improbable sizes.
useing android my phone has gmail iremovably installed on my phone, but was disabled before I even put a sim in it, but in spite of this, having just checked, it has user data, something in cache, and has used some internet data.
how creepy is that.
Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
201–210 of 403 posts
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can access iCloud from an iOS app, it has its own public framework called CloudKit, so you could create your own version of it. If you don't like that example Chrome and Edge are both forced to use WebKit on iOS but are still much larger so.
> You can access iCloud from an iOS app, it has its own public framework called CloudKit, so you could create your own version of it. How is this relevant? The point of having a Google Photos app is to access / back up your photos via Google Photos, not to make an alternative frontend for iCloud.
If the point of a Google Photos app is to access / back up your photos via Google Photos (web), then it seems rather dubious that making API calls to a cloud server is an endeavour that takes hundreds of megabytes of code and resources.
If, rather more accurately, the point of a Google Photos app is to provide a photo editor and various other photo-adjacent functionality coincidentally including the ability to back up photos to Google's servers, then again that raises the question of why Apple's equivalent app is so much smaller. Are there image-related system frameworks that Google cannot use that Apple is using? Then sure, feel free to count them in Apple Photos' "true" size. But if Google simply won't use them then IMO it's fair to ask if the size of what they're shipping is worth it.
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's actually a bit more to it than that. A lot of what Apple apps actually do is hidden in frameworks made for that one specific app , which, unlike with 3rd-party applications, are part of the system, not of the app itself. Compare the size of Safari.app versus Safari Technology Preview.app (which actually ships all the frameworks it needs).
If you have those apps handy and could share the sizes it would be very useful. I don’t have a way to check this. (Or do I? All I have is an iPhone )
Safari on MacOS is 66M, Safari Technology Preview is 226M
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#204The article doesn't answer the question. The content can be summarised as "The Gmail app is 700 MB!"
Biggest Google Apps for me:
Gboard 247MB
Google 415MB
Google Play Services 1330MB
Google Play Store 165MB
Messages 321MB
Gmail 233MB
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They use those videos on the lock screen for example.
Not saying it’s a good idea that they ship all of those big video files. Believe me, my MBP M1 with 256GB SSD barely has space left even when I go and clean up various files I no longer need.
Foolish as I was, I believed that doubling the amount of storage compared to the MacBook Air I had before it would leave me with plenty of space for years to come. In reality it did not take much time before I was using most of the storage available.
So when I bought my latest iPhone not long after I bought that MBP, I opted for the iPhone model that has 1TB storage. And at least on my phone I consistently have a good amount of space left. Every couple of months I move pictures and videos from the phone to an external hard drive. So since it was only a week or so since last I moved pictures and videos from the phone, I am currently using 350 GB of storage on the phone.
Out of those currently used 350 GB, just under 40GB is accounted for by music I have downloaded in the SoundCloud app, which is ok even though maybe a little bit silly on my part. I have it set to download all songs that I favourite, and I sometimes manually download whole albums and whole playlists. Not because I want to listen to all of it offline but so that when I am offline I still have a wide selection to choose from. For example on the occasion that I fly by plane once or twice a year.
Another 20GB of storage space is used by maps I’ve downloaded in the Organic Maps app to have locally saved maps for various places I’ve been to or want to go to. Again, a little bit silly to keep that much map data even for the places that I am not going to visit for at least 6-12 months, and which will need to be updated again when I do go there to ensure I have up to date maps. But all in all, I can “afford it” with a terabyte total storage. And both the songs in SoundCloud and the map data is data that I could manually go through and delete as much of as I’d like to if I ever were in a pinch and needed to free up space.
At times I will hoover around 700 GB of storage used on the phone if it’s been a while since I moved pictures and videos and I have filmed some longer videos.
My phone being a few years old now however, it doesn’t have USB-C. So it takes a bit of time to move pictures and videos from it. Even if I transfer over the network it doesn’t seem much faster than USB 2.0, weirdly.
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#206The article doesn't answer the question. The content can be summarised as "The Gmail app is 700 MB!"
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.
Gmail started by giving 1 GB of free storage to users as a carrot. Over 2 decades later, how much does it really matter if the app goes from 70% of that down to even 10% of that, and would that outweigh what else people actually want to see done instead?
I mean, it's certainly not anything to boast about from a technical perspective. I just don't know whether it's really enough to warrant any shame for the product though.
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> An unoptimized version of the app I'm currently working on has a ~15mb binary, the core app not including all the "extras" people have asked for. It has about 75mb of assets, probably 10-15% are unused but I have no idea. The download size is about 400mb. What are the other 310?
Frameworks from other companies. A lot of it is analytics/tracking, some payment processing, etc. There are a few open source libraries we're using as well but those probably are Again, a lot of these companies have also been around so if my app has a ton of bloat from years of work, we're bringing in frameworks from other companies who have been around for years as well and probably have a similar amount of crap in…
Imagine, it's not just making sure your code is secure, but your also counting on all those libraries's being secure. Let alone all these frameworks as you say - payment, advertising, analytics... You could have the most secure code ever, but when it is just one link in a chain outside your control, best not overthink it or you won't sleep.
You can see why bug bounties get rewarded well. Though mindful, money is not what drives everyone. Then there are the greedy, in which such exploits value on the black market can be higher. Not forgetting government agencies level.
I wonder which email client will break the 1GB mark, and when we will see a resurgence in reducing bloat. I'm sure that phase will come, did for Microsoft once.
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#208The 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…
Sounds like a ripe opportunity for someone to reverse engineer their USB protocol and create a free/open alternative.
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#209A significant portion of larger sizes is likely due to how Google handles shared code across its iOS suite. They rely heavily on a shared C++ backend (using tools like J2ObjC or similar internal transpilers) to keep logic consistent between Android, iOS and of course the web. When you pull in the gmail dependency from the internal monorepo, you are most likely pulling in the entire visual stack for Google meet, chat…
Very insightful, rather than unjustified speculation. Of course it doesn’t explain why many other apps are so big, e.g. Withings, Bunq (bank), and Albert Heijn (supermarket) together eat 1GB of my storage. All 3 are things I need to list data, but somehow are the size they are.
Re: Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's something that I would (very generously) expect to add 5 megabytes.
The background images alone would be more than that.
We don't need that to be pre-loaded on the device, do we? how often are they used? and when one is set to be used, the user is definitely online already, just grab the one then