Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by paulddraper on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @02:49PM (#46517613)

> a few dozen kilobytes

A "hello world" Android starts at ~5MB.

It is possible to make it smaller if choosing some non-default different tools.

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Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by rabf on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @04:08PM (#46518776)

https://github.com/cnlohr/rawdrawandroid

25Kb

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Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by paulddraper on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @05:41PM (#46534215)

> non-default different tools

The “default” recommendation is clearly Android Studio plus Kotlin/Java.

Other tools are smaller.

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Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by Aachen on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @04:19PM (#46518938)

Idk what to tell you but my "hello world" + a few dozen lines of functionality are 9.6KB. Haven't done anything special to shave things off

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Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by vbezhenar on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @03:43PM (#46518402)

Hello world Android app includes a lot of dependencies like compat libs, constraint layout, kotlin runtime. These are not essential and can be removed.

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Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by binaryturtle on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @03:52PM (#46518529)

Outch… and I though an ~8KB "Hello, World!" here on my rusty Mac is HUGE already.

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Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by pjmlp on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @04:24AM (#46524299)

I am quite sure that isn't using the plain Android APIs, and has a bunch of needless libraries.

Use plain Java, regular Android views, handle yourself the ifdefs for Android versions, and the 5 MB won't be there.

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