alt Hacker NewsWhy is the Gmail app 700 MB?
Comments
A 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 and spaces, plus the heavy protocol buffer definitions and gRPC libraries that underpin them.
Even if you don't use the "meet" tab, the binary could be including the video codecs, the real-time transmission logic plus the AR filter assets, because the app is compiled as a "Super App" container rather than a modular mail client. I feel it's an organizational artifact as much as a technical one.
The table at the end is seriously misguided. You can’t compare the sizes of an iOS preinstalled app against a non-preinstalled app. It’s just a thin UI shell where the code for all the functionality is inside system frameworks. The Photos app is quoted at 4.2MB. Guess what, if you delete that, you still have system components to render photos, UI for a photo picker, perform analysis on photos such as face recognition, all the iCloud networking code to support iCloud Photo Library, etc.
> why is the Gmail app almost 80x the size of the native Mail app?
Apple Mail leverages libraries and frameworks already present on the device.
Google uses libraries and frameworks very likely already present on say Android, but on iOS they have to ship a gigantic runtime that implements those things the app depends on; this way they only have to write the app once for several supported platforms.
I’m just speculating by the way but it sounds like the likely reason.
You’ll notice Google Docs or sheets are equally gigantic because each also ships a copy of those enormous runtimes.
The article doesn't answer the question. The content can be summarised as "The Gmail app is 700 MB!"
The article compares the native (iOS) mail app which is (from the article) 8.7MB. What I believe is happening is that the gmail app is not a native app, it is some cross-platform monstrosity, so Google has to bring all the widgets and doo-dads that they wrote so that it looks just like it does on all the other platforms. The native iOS mail app is so tiny because part of iOS that the article mentions taking up 25GB contains all the native widgets and doo-dads that the native mail app can use.
Well, something fishy is going on because there is literally no way that Safari, in its entirety, is 5.1 MB. The numbers for the others app seem similarly off.
It would be really hard to believe that somehow Apple has found some magic formula to make their apps 100x smaller than Google and Microsoft.
Much more likely is that the reporting by the OS is off somehow (probably most of the app functionality is tied up in shared resources counted towards system files, and not counted towards the app's size).
With respect, I would expect more from articles posted on Hacker News. More thorough research, and in fact an answer to the question.
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...
It’s wild when you put it into context. I remember when Gmail first opened to the public with a whopping *1 GB* of storage… now the app alone almost exceeds that.
AOT overhead 200MB (ensuring app loads fast)
Frameworks 150MB
Assets for all screen resolutions 50MB
Google Meet/Chat/etc 100MB
AI models 25MB
Until someone stops installing gmail because it's too big (and it's coming back as a signal), I doubt anything will be done about it. In the absence of constraints, things just keep growing... without constraints. The costs of pruning/shaking embedded frameworks, refactoring, optimization, etc. cannot be justified if it's not signaled as a problem by customers.
I'm assuming one reason is frameworks. They can get quite big.
Another reason, is rusty code (not Rust. It's a play on the saying "Code doesn't rust", which I used to hear, last century).
It does, indeed, rust. Actually, "rots" is probably more apropos.
I'll bet that's the reason that Xcode is such a pig (makes GMail look like an anorexic).
Code is created that people no longer understand, so they are loath to make large changes. They just do enough to fix a bug, and pray that they don't need to dig any deeper. One of my first software jobs, was exactly like that.
When that happens, the code never shrinks. It just accretes.
I genuinely struggle to understand how apps can get that large. Games with hi-res graphics, sure. But Gmail barely has any assets. And they aren't shipping with custom runtimes or anything of that sort (like an Electron app) because Apple doesn't allow it. So how much code can you possibly write that compiles to 700 MB?
It might have to do with the fact that (at least on iOS), you can participate in a Google Meet call with just the Gmail app, as well as authenticate sign-ins, and who know what more.
Could the main issue be Google is shipping apps within apps?
The easy answer: Google simply does not care. Some mix of: they don't measure it, they don't look at it, they don't goal around reducing it, nobody's performance review is going to be better because they reduced it, no director is asking product teams why they're increasing the app size. It's not surprising why these companies don't care, because it's a tragedy of the commons. The better question is why is Apple allowing these companies to ship apps that unnecessarily take up a meaningful amount of storage space?
Mine is not 200MB on Android - the base apk is 67MB + 32MB for the ARM v8a specific libs. This is the code, the local caching and other data might make up the rest.
For Android, you can check [1] Download the apk, rename it as a zip and look inside to see the files.
A quick file analysis of the 67MB shows around 58MB of java code and some 32MB of ARM libs, 31MB of this is the libvideochat.
[1] https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/gmail/gmail-2025-11...
One of the reasons the Facebook app was large was that they were using Thrift or something and generating a tremendous amount of code for their API interop. Protobuf+GRPC is similarly heavyweight, so I wouldn't be surprised if some megabytes were dedicated to the generated code. But hundreds of megabytes is wild. It has to be one-package compatibility as opposed to specialized app packages for different form factors etc.
And every single update to every single app is another 500MB. Even if the notes are just “we love enhancing our app, so here’s some tiny bug fixes or something. We won’t actually tell you what we have changed”
I haven’t made iPhone apps but my guess it that the size comes from bundling libraries and dependencies needed, sort of like how venv includes as snapshot of python and all dependencies into your project folder. Apple core apps probably uses iOS libraries (25GB) already on the device
I believe it is because it includes a suite of enterprise management features in addition to Gmail-related features. (Search for "google basic mobile device management" for more info.)
People need to reread this classic piece from 2001 every so often: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...
As a regular user, you are probably using 10% of all features available.
I maintain an app size inspection tool that runs locally on your macOS and added the file inspector (Sunburst chart) for Gmail if anyone is interested in exploring its contents.
As others have pointed out, the main executable is huge (~300MB) and there are a lot of localization files, but not too much traditional asset duplication.
You can click into different slices of the app and see what it's made of if interested: https://dotipa.app/?app=Gmail#examples
10 MB mail app. 690 MB local llm to write snarky emails for you.
I know that in some cases, apparent bloat like this is related to needing to support so many potential devices and versions of the underlying OS. Google has to support, on iOS, roughly 6 years of devices and their variations + OS variations on them. Each of these may require their own libraries compiled against it, for optimal performance or because it simply is less practical to engineer non-breaking updates against new SDK and HW versions in the same codebase without introducing complexity.
Apple, on the other hand, doesn't have to do this. They can integrate at lower levels and even with all else being equal can develop updates with perfect insight on the ecosystem and foresight on things to come.
Somewhat supporting this possible explanation is that, similar to Apple on iOS, Google's apps on android are significantly smaller.
Google and others are putting 2FA notifications in their regular apps like gmail. I had to open my gmail app to get a 2FA code instead of my google authenticator app today... which is very weird and probably increases the needed security of the gmail app in addition to the size
maybe because we need to be pushed to buy minimum the 256GB versions of phones. it is a wintel deja vu
Incidentally, the last ssd i bought at the beginning of last year now costs double what i paid for it.
Ram is what, 3-4x?
It's a great time to ship more bloated apps, the suckers will enrich the hardware manufacturers, won't they?
For me, the most important takeaway from the article was that the Passwords app supports 2FA codes! I was not aware of this, that's nice and getting rid of Authenticator is one less Google thing to worry about.
1.15 GB for me - dear god.
There's a comment in the article with two helpful links:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30443570 https://www.emergetools.com/app/example/ios/com.google.Gmail
The bloat? Mostly "localization".
This is why I use installable PWAs wherever possible. On my Android phone right now, the Outlook PWA uses 281kB. You still get notifications, but I haven't measured if data usage is higher.
Maybe, just maybe should Apple vary the amount they charge by app size.
> Also, can someone explain why Microsoft Authenticator is 150 MB to show 6-digit codes?
That one's on the author. Duo Mobile is 2MB and shows the same 6-digit codes just fine.
My guess: phone get more storage so we can build fatter apps. With RAM and storage getting more expensive maybe developers will face some pressure to deliver slimmer apps but I don't have many hopes for that. It's going to take at least a couple of device replacement cycles with lower and lower RAM and storage for that to happen.
If the AppStores would consider app size in ranking we might see an improvement.
For perspective, the entire iPhone OS 1.0.x ipsw image was around 100MB in 2007 (and there was a 4GB iPhone SKU for a brief period.)
I’m just guessing but probably because it’s not just GMail, it’s likely chock full of all Google’s other walled garden nonsense. Hey, you installed GMail? Great, here’s a 2FA client for all federated Google logins everywhere too. hell i’m surprised it doesn’t contain the entire chrome browser as well.
On the flip side, our iOS app which _uses the Gmail API_ and also supports raw IMAP is ~14MB:
Android seems to be a bit better in that regard: not in the sense that applications are smaller (though I think they are, slightly), but rather that you can easily unpack or decompile most of them and see what's inside.
There it tends to be mostly due to dependencies, including some native libraries in multiple copies for 2-3 CPU architecture.
My whole cat is, what, a couple gigs of DNA?
Android is slightly less horrendous but still bad - probably because at least in some markets enough people have low end phones that size does somewhat matter. I suspect Uber made optimizing app size a priority once they realized that their 1 GB behemoth was hovering on the top of the "things you can delete instead of your wedding photos if you want to be able to continue to use your phone" list, and they were losing customers over it. But there are still apps that are hundreds of MB with no valid reason to be that fat.
Meanwhile, well-written browsers - which are essentially whole operating systems - are in the dozens, so this is 100% bloat.
There simply is little incentive to optimize apps for size, because someone else pays the price and there is little consequence for making it big. Slapping another data collection or ad SDK into the app is easy and free.
If the EU was serious about it, it would consider it part of the ecodesign rules since it forces people to buy new phones for more storage much earlier than needed.
If the app stores were serious about it, they'd either re-introduce the hard cap and stick to it, or at least show the size prominently. Or start charging fees for bloaty apps. At least on the mobile version of the Play store, I don't think you can even see the app size without starting an install - let alone search or filter by it. It's as if they want to encourage bloat.
If you're interested in iOS app size analysis, I build and maintain this https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dotipa/id6742254881 ($4.99). Happy to share download codes, HMU at info [at] dotipa.app
You just need to check the version history for mobile apps to see what the developers are doing! It’s a wealth of information on new features and changes.
For example here’s the Facebook app for iOS:
543.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (2w ago)
542.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (3w ago)
541.1 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (1mo ago)
541.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (1mo ago)
540.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (1mo ago)
539.1 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (1mo ago)
539.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (1mo ago)
538.1 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (1mo ago)
538.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (2mo ago)
537.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (2mo ago)
536.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (2mo ago)
535.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (2mo ago)
534.1 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (2mo ago)
534.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (2mo ago)
533.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (3mo ago)
532.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (3mo ago)
531.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (3mo ago)
530.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (3mo ago)
529.1 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (4mo ago)
529.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (4mo ago)
528.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (4mo ago)
527.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (4mo ago)
526.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (4mo ago)
525.0.0 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (4mo ago)
524.1 — Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster. (5mo ago)Why is the Gmail app not open source
Same goes for other other bloated apps mentioned in the blog post
It does do a lot of auth / security stuff for the entire Google Account... not 700 MB worth, but still thinking of the Gmail app as "just an email app" doesn't do it justice either.
Because big enough tech companies always shipped their org charts in their products.
This may finally drive me to just use Apple Mail for my Google Workspace account. I know it's not a fair comparison, but an app I made that's in the App Store is only 8MB.
On my Android phone, just the calculator app is 13MB. How in hell is it 13MB just for a calculator? It beggars belief.
My prediction is that this will continue to occur indefinitely.
The conversation is always the same, only there is another zero on the end.
We'll have terabyte apps in not too long.
(100% serious)
Not sure how many ppl know this: you can use another email provider, e.g. [email protected], to register to YouTube.
Bloated libraries and support for multiple versions of iOS/phones?
> For most of that period, the size of the Gmail app hovered around 12 MB, with a sudden jump to more than 200 MB near the start of 2017... The Gmail app, on the App Store, is currently 760.7 MB in size.
With charts:
https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/the-top-iphone-apps-are-tak...
I had no idea common apps used to be just 10-30 MB. But are now hundreds of MB.
Something like Gmail doesn't have massive hi-resolution bitmap graphics. Since the article doesn't give any answer, I'm assuming it's a hand-wavy "frameworks", but that's an enormous amount of compiled code.