My application has a collection of around 1940 icons that are used throughout.
They're currently in ICO and new images provided to me come in ICO format too. I have noticed that they contain a 16x16 and 32x32 representation of each icon in one file.
Each file is roughly 4KB in filesize (as reported by finder, but ls reports that they vary from being ~1000 bytes to 5000 bytes)
A very small number of these icons only contain the 32x32 representation, and as a result are only around 700 bytes in size.
Currently I am bundling these icons with my application and they are inflating the size of the app a bit more than I would like.
Altogether, the images total just about 25.5MB. Xcode must do some kind of compression because the resulting app bundle is about 12.4MB. Compressing this further into a ZIP (as it would be when submitted to the App Store), results in a final file of 5.8MB.
I'm aware that the maximum limit for over the air App Store downloads has been raised to 20MB since the introduction of the iPad (I'm not sure if that extends to iPhone apps as well as iPad apps though, if not the limit would be 10MB).
My worry is that new icons are going to be added (sometimes up to 10 icons per week), and will continue to inflate the app bundle over time.
What is the best way to distribute these icons with my app?
Things I've tried and not had much success with:
Converting the icons from ICO to PNG:
I tried this in the hopes that the pngcrush utility would help out with the filesize. But it appears that it doesn't make much of a difference between a normal PNG and a crushed png (I believe it just optimises the image for display on the iPhone's GPU rather than compress it's size). Also in going from ICO to PNG actually increased the size of the icon file...
Zipping the images, and then uncompressing them on first run.
While this did reduce the overall image sizes, I found that the effort needed to unzip them, copy them to the documents folder and ensure that duplication doesn't happen on upgrades was too much hassle to be worth the benefit. Also, on original and 3G iPhones unzipping and copying around 25MB of images takes too long and creates a bad experience...
Things I've considered but not yet tried:
Instead of distributing the icons within the app bundle, host them online, and download each icon on demand (it depends on the user's data as to which icons will actually be displayed and when).
Issues with this is that bandwidth costs money, and image downloads will be bandwidth intensive. However, my app currently has a small userbase of around 5,500 users (of which I estimate around 1500 to be active based on Flurry stats), and I have a huge unused bandwidth allowance with my current hosting package.
So I'm open to thoughts on how to solve this tricky issue.
I did some research on MonoTouch for a client. MonoTouch has a minimum file size of 5.1mb because all the C# stuff. It doesn't seem to have affected apps store users willingness to download the MonoTouch based apps.
In my research I didn't see any evidence that end users pay much attention to app size when making purchasing decisions. A lot of apps are first downloaded to non-Mobiles via iTunes and the difference in download time between a 1mb and 5mb is barely noticeable. A lot of end users are only vaguely aware that apps even have a size.
My recommendation would be to try and prioritize the icons based on usage rate. Praeto's rule shows up in most data so you'll probably find that 20% of the icons get 80% of the use. Include that 20% most active icons in the app bundle and then download the rest.
Related
Hello I have a big game (mobile) divided into different parts is it possible to build a small version and make the user only download certain part ?like for example creating different games and he can download some
It's complicated but it's possible.
I don't write code because it would be endless work, but I give you some guidelines:
Asset bundles
Asset bundle is a way to very compress all your assets except scripts.
Basically you can think of it as zip files, which you can unzip and use whenever you want.
For example you can insert all the assets of a specific minigame, such as textures, 3D models, sprites, audio files and the rest.
When the user wants to play a minigame, you will have to unzip it.
You can also show a screen showing the upload percentage.
Firebase Storage
Asset bundles save you a lot of space, but if you need to save even more space, you can upload them to a server and the user will download the asset bundle from the server.
Obviously it will take a little longer than to recall it from memory; moreover, he will not be able to download it and then play it if he is offline.
To upload your asset bundles, I can recommend the Firebase Storage service.
You will not pay anything for a long time because you have 5gb free and in a month you can download it seems to me up to 1gb totally free.
Alternatively you can rent a normal server.
if you think my answer helped you, you can mark it as accepted. I would very much appreciate it :)
Does using libraries like OpenEars will drastically enlarge my app size? Or I can just extract the text to speech stuff, and get away with it...Probably removing all those langs? I don't have any idea.
I checked and OpenEars sample app is 33MB - which is big!
So my question is - can I implement text to speech in my app without compromising the size so much? I mean I can live with 2-3 MBs but 30...
Thank you!
OpenEars developer here. Just follow the instructions here to reduce your final app size, there's no need to ship all the voices or any features of the framework that you aren't making use of. Depending on which voices you're using and which feature, you might see an app size increase of between 6 megs and ~20 unless you're using a large number of the available voices. The sample app uses all of the framework features and two voices, and supports a few iOS versions, so its binary size reflects that.
My guess is you can't, audio will take up a lot of space.
Removing unneeded language will free some space but 2-3 mb for all the audio guess that isen't really possible.
So I have a huge app. It is full of features, most of which require a couple images, and all of which have to be saved as part of the binary file. I worked really hard before the release to get under the 20MB threshold, to make the app more accessible to users. My release binaryt was 18.1MB.
So now, with the new iPad and its retina display, what should I do about updating all of my images for this new display. If I did include an updated copy, I would be way over the 20MB limit. Currently, I store some image files on my sever, and download/cache them as the user needs them, but im hesitant to do this with major features because I'm concerned some users may not always have internet access. And without some of those images, the app is useless.
Is there any way I can have an iPhone only install the iPhone graphics, and visa versa?
Apple has since raised the limit for all devices to 50 MB due to the release of the new iPad. This should hopefully allow you to fit all of the pictures in your app bundle.
One approach to minimize the size of your files is by compressing your PNG files. This will only minimize the size, and the images will continue to work correctly.
The links provided below will help you find a crusher you desire.
PNG Crush
PNG Compressor
ImageOptim
A week before I have uploaded my iPhone app the zipped version size is 17.2MB, My app released today and it size turns out to be 20.2MB. Now its not possible to download that app through carrier network(since it crossed 20MB limit it needs WiFi). Why the size increased from 17.2 to 20.2MB?
The executable (ARM code) inside the app bundle is encrypted by Apple, which means that it no longer gets compressed in size when zipped up into an ipa file.
To estimate the actual ipa size, replace the executable with some /dev/rand of the same size before a test zip of the app bundle.
Pay attention to how large the app is before it is zipped. The zip file is not what goes to the app store, you need to look at your actual app file.
I just wrote a blog post on how exactly to check the maximum size of a binary here.
Short version:
Open the archive, find the executable, remove it, and add it's uncompressed size to the size of all the other files compressed to get the max size of the bundle after encryption and compression. Final size will be slightly smaller but no larger.
Anyone knows the max size of Safari's 'Offline Application Cache' on the iPad & iPhone. Looks like it's 5MB. Is there any way to enlarge this size?
Offline application cache docs: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/SafariJSDatabaseGuide/OfflineApplicationCache/OfflineApplicationCache.html
I have the same problem on iPhone. On iPad though I figured a turn around. If your manifest contains files less than 5MB the first time and you update the cache by window.applicationCache.update() and before doing the update you increase the manifest files to be below 10mb it will work. If you continue doing that (increasing the manifest by <5MB each time and then update()) you will see that the iPad can cache more than the 5MB limit.
It is so sad that Apple by not supporting Flash and MIDP but only HTML5 for web-apps screws so much on that.
If your application uses more than 5mb than iPhone/iPad will ask the user to allow the website to use more space.
Let's read my test at here: Mobile Safari 5mb HTML5 application cache limit?
I think your apps need user's agreement for storage more than 5MB. Another problem you get is the network problem. It's too slow for 50MB transferring...