To clarify, I will be uploading new app to the App Store and I want to determine what the final size for the end user will be.
Currently, unzipped build file is 22MB and little over 18MB if I zip it (as per instructions for uploading new apps). My question therefore is which file size will be shown in the store? Do users download zipped archive or unzipped app file?
Thank you for your responses.
Roger's response doesn't take into account the additional DRM that Apple adds to your applications. This will generally add at least 1 MB to the final size, and this does affect whether or not it can be downloaded over 3G.
That's not always completely correct. My zip was 19.9mb when I launched but the store read it as 20.1mb and thus it didn't qualify for anything but wifi downloading.
Try to stay away from pushing the 20mb limit...
You can take a look at My answer... The compressed size is wrong: Did Apple change their app archiving method?
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I asked a question on here a few weeks ago, and everyone said I needed to look at the .ipa file and that was it (to stay under 50 mb). However, I was browsing Apples iTunes Connect website from questions, and they posted this:
Why did Apple make my app file size larger than the .zip file I uploaded for my binary in iTunes Connect?
When your application is approved by Apple to sell on the App Store, it is encrypted for DRM purposes and re-compressed. When the encryption is added, the size of the compressed file will increase. The exact size of the increase will vary from app to app, however, the size increase can be large when the binary contains a lot of contiguous zeros. We are unable to guarantee the size of your file after the encryption has been added.
iOS apps with a final size of up to 50MB can be downloaded over the 3G network. Larger iOS apps will require a Wi-Fi connection.
So does that mean the .ipa file is going to increase once they encrypt it, or is the .ipa file already encrypted?
You can check the estimated App Store size in Organizer after you archive your app. In my case, the actual file size is even smaller than the estimate (828k vs 534k).
Okay, so i've read countless places saying the app size limit is either 20 mb and some say it's 50mb... which is it?
More importantly, my current app has an "estimate app store size" of 106.1mb in the Archive section of the Organizer. HOWEVER, when I distribute it to an ad-hoc file, it comes out as a .ipa which has the size of 48.3mb. Which one should I use, and I'm confused as to why they are so different.
The official (and reliably up to date) resource for this is the Uploading Your Binary section of the iTunes Connect Guide (expand the 'To begin the Ready to Upload Binary flow' section). At the time of this edit it states:
iOS App binary files can be as large as 2 GB, but the executable file (app_name.app/app_name) cannot exceed 60 MB. However, consider download times when determining your app’s size. Minimize the file’s size as much as possible, keeping in mind that there is a 100 MB limit for over-the-air downloads.
Over-the-air download limit means apps below this threshold can be downloaded with a mobile data connection (anything above the limit requires a WiFi connection, or to be downloaded through iTunes on the computer). This is important as many users may not have ready access to WiFi and you don't want to prevent them from being able to get your app!
Also the .ipa is a compressed, encrypted zip file, whereas the archive is just a fully inflated package of the app, which is why the file sizes are different. The .ipa file size is the one that will be used in the App Store, so use that as your reference for total size. That said, the smaller you can make your app, obviously the happier the user will be!
Apple recently bumped up the size from 20 to 50 shortly after WWDC '12. I am not sure if it was officially announced, but was observed in the error message of larger apps.
Use the IPA size. The files sent from the app store are compressed. Perhaps the 106.1 is the uncompressed size, or it is a bug.
Today, Apple Increases Over-the-Air App Store Download Limit to 100MB.
I want to write a app to download and manage files from the web. If I just put the file in the Document. Is there any limit of file size in the Directory?
can any one help me..
thanks in advance.
Just a warning with the introduction of iOS5 saving large files or files that can be regenerated into the documents directory is frowned upon (actually you were never meant to do it but its only being enforced now). This is because the files in the documents directory get backed up to iCloud and you obviously do not want to fill that up. Apple have started rejecting apps just for this reason.
You should now place the downloaded files into the temp or cache directories. But also be aware that the OS will clear these directories when running low on memory so you need to have logic in you app to check if the files exist and re-download if they do not.
No real limit except the device and other user data. Still best to be frugal.
I am after some suggestions on how to reduce the final app size that gets submitted to apple?
Or is there any way to have stuff download after the app is isntalled? so that we can keep the app under 20 meg, but then the app downloads the rest of the program after the user has installed it and run the application?
ta
Daz
If your application uses a lot of image resources, your application could download those images instead of building them into the application.
Theoretically possible. Your app can access the file system, so it can make and save, and later read files.
The deal-breaker I see is that for most purposes, Apple probably wouldn't allow it.
They test the program as-is when you submit it, and they'll notice that it just sits there and tries to download a bunch of stuff from your server. If this takes more than, say, 30 seconds, they'll reject it for usability problems.
If the content downloaded could have been bundled with the program, they'll probably have a problem with that. If you could argue that the downloaded content changes rapidly and is a feature of your app, it might fly, but only if you keep it small..
Sure this is totally possible. Since it is most likely some sort of media that is causing a large file size, either images, video, or audio, you could definitely download them after the fact or supply a download button for users to add these features as "extra" content, if they are not critical to the operation of your app.
One thing to consider is that some users are not on an unlimited data plan. So for politeness, they should know what you are doing.
Also, if you are just over the limit, you might also be able to ship the application with the resources in a zip archive and then decompress the archive in the Documents directory.
In many applications images take lion share of the download size, and they can be greatly reduced with ImageAlpha and ImageOptim.
Check out this case study halving download size of Tweetbot by converting images to a more efficient PNG variant.
Is there a way to check my app size before I create the ipa file for app store upload?
i.e. while I work on my app (adding content and methods) - I want to check what would the app size be if I had created the ipa file as is.
An .ipa file is typically a ZIP file with a ".ipa" extension instead of ".zip". This ZIP/IPA file contains some metadata, and the compiled app itself.
You can't forcast the size of an app before compiling it, for many reasons, especially the fact that the compiler will make some optimizations of your code and so on.
You can't either forcast the size of the IPA, because it will be the result of the ZIP (LZW) compression on the APP payload (+ some other files), and the compression process is also dependant of the content (e.g. compressing a text file using LZW/ZIP will result in a file that is more or less big depending on the fact that the text contains more or less repetitions, etc).
The only thing you may do is that you can check the sum of the sizes of all your resource files, especially images, video, sounds, etc... you add to your project & app, because of course adding a very big image file will impact the size of your final app bundle and thus the size of your IPA. But that would only be an unprecise approximation on how your final IPA size will change when adding files, without taking the LZW/ZIP compression into account anyway.
When you build a target, under products, you can see the app file there, you can reveal it in finder and check out its size..
In XCode 4.3.1, you can select target as IOS Device and from Product menu choose Archive. It creates the archive. You can view the archive detail from Window->Organizer. There you will