Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?

Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by jeroenhd on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @02:57PM (#46517738)

Thunderbird for Android supports pretty much everything Gmail supports and probably more, but it's "only" 40MiB in size. Even on Android, that's a 3x size reduction.

I don't know why iOS apps in general are so much larger than Android apps (that doesn't just seem to be a Google problem) but you certainly don't need the full size of the Gmail app.

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Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by tentacleuno on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @06:12PM (#46520198)

> I don't know why iOS apps in general are so much larger than Android apps [...]

Rough guess: It probably wouldn't be this dramatic of an increase, but could it be something to do with iOS disallowing Just-in-Time compilation, and forcing Ahead-of-Time? I've always wondered.

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Re:Why is the Gmail app 700 MB? by pmontra on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @05:48PM (#46519940)

More than 3x: GMail is 194 MB on my Android phone and the old K9 (which Thunderbird built upon) is 10.60 MB.

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