Android app developers face numerous challenges while making their applications efficient and high-performing. The rapidly changing technology world requires constant updates about new features and APIs, and security considerations add another dimension. In this volatile scenario, developers must employ strategic techniques to enhance app performance, balancing functionality, compatibility, and efficiency.

This blog will delve into effective strategies to overcome these challenges and optimize your app’s performance, ensuring a seamless user experience across a diverse Android landscape.

Table of Contents:

Advanced Techniques to Optimize Android App Performance

These 7 techniques will help you deliver a better user experience, increase user retention, and boost your app ratings and revenue.

1. Reduce App Size

One of the initial steps for making an Android app more efficient is through size reduction. For most, an overly big application keeps them away from downloading such an application, most importantly in developing countries, as storage devices are small along with scarce network bandwidth. According to Google, every 6 MB increase in app size can reduce the install conversion rate by 1%.

There are several ways to reduce app size:

  • Using Android App Bundles: Android App Bundles are a new upload format that lets you upload a single app bundle file to Google Play. This generates and serves optimized APKs for each user’s device configuration. Users download only the code and resources they need to run your app, resulting in fewer app downloads and updates.
  • Minimizing resource count and size: Resources such as images, sounds, fonts, and videos can take up a lot of space in your app. All of these will reduce the number of resources and size: unused resource removal, image and sound compression, vector drawable rather than a bitmap image, and alternative resources for different screen sizes and densities.
  • Removing unused code and libraries: You can remove unused code and libraries by using tools such as ProGuard, R8, and Lint, which can shrink, obfuscate, and optimize your code.

Also Read: The Key Differences Between iOS and Android App Development

2. Optimize Networking

Networking can consume a lot of battery, data, and CPU resources and cause delays and errors in your app. To optimize networking, you should follow these best practices:

  • Use Caching and Offline Mode: Caching is a technique that stores data locally on the device to retrieve it faster. Offline mode is a feature that allows your app to work even when there is no network connection by using cached data or local storage.
  • Optimize Network Requests: Network requests are the operations that your app performs to communicate with a server, such as fetching data, uploading files, or sending messages. You can optimize network requests by using efficient protocols and formats, such as HTTP/2, gRPC, and protobuf, which can reduce network latency and bandwidth.
  • Monitor Network Performance: These involve monitoring networks, which could be either good or not, to ensure performance improvements. Various tools and approaches can enable performance measurement. Firebase Performance Monitoring, Network Profiler, and Charles Proxy are but examples of various tools through which network metrics might include, among other metrics, time of responses, throughput errors, and traffic.

3. Optimize Images

Images can enhance your app’s visual appeal and functionality, but they can also impact your app performance if not optimized properly during Android development. To optimize images, you should consider these tips:

  • Use Appropriate Image Formats: Formats for images tell us how images are saved and kept on a device. You choose the format best suited for your needs. For example, photographs use JPEG best while icons and logos are suited to PNG. WebP is good at both, though; it is more compressed and better in quality than JPEG and PNG..
  • Resize and Scale Images: You should resize and scale images to match the size and density of the device screen so that they do not waste memory and disk space and do not cause distortion or pixelation.
  • Use Image-Loading Libraries: These libraries can help you load, display, and manipulate images in your app. They offer many benefits, such as caching, memory management, transformation, animation, and error handling.

4. Improve Memory Usage

Memory is the realm in which your app stores the data and executes code. This is a shared and limited resource; therefore, when your application consumes too much memory, then some of the common issues would be slow performance, lots of crashes, and out-of-memory errors; hence, follow the best practices to improve your memory usage:

  • Avoid Memory Leaks: Memory leaks occur when your app allocates memory but does not release it when it is no longer needed. You can avoid memory leaks by using weak references, avoiding static references, and unregistering listeners and callbacks when they are not needed.
  • Use Memory-Efficient Data Structures and Algorithms: Data structures and algorithms are the ways that your app stores and manipulates data in memory. You should use memory-efficient data structures and algorithms that suit your app’s needs and scenarios.
  • Monitor Memory Usage: Monitoring memory usage is important for detecting and diagnosing any memory issues that may be affecting your app’s performance.

5. Use Baseline Profiles

Baseline Profiles are the collection of information regarding the most commonly invoked methods in your application that Google Play collects during installation or update of the app. Using Baseline Profiles, ART can perform AOT compilation and optimization of such methods, leading to quicker app startup, lower memory usage, and better battery life.

To use Baseline Profiles, you need to follow these steps:

  1. Enable Baseline Profiles in your app by adding the android:useEmbeddedDex=”true” attribute to the tag in your app’s manifest file.
  2. Upload your app as an Android App Bundle to Google Play, which will generate and serve Baseline Profiles for your app.
  3. Test your app with Baseline Profiles by using the Play Console’s internal app-sharing feature, which will let you download and install your app with Baseline Profiles on your device.

6. Use DEX Layout Optimizations

DEX Layout Optimizations are files that contain information about the order of the methods in your app, which Google Play collects during app installation or update.

To use DEX Layout Optimizations, you need to do the following steps:

  1. Enable DEX Layout Optimizations in your app by adding the android:useEmbeddedDex=”true” attribute to the tag in your app’s manifest file.
  2. Upload your app as an Android App Bundle to Google Play, which will generate and serve DEX Layout Optimizations for your app.
  3. Test your app with DEX Layout Optimizations by using the Play Console’s internal app-sharing feature, which will let you download and install your app with DEX Layout Optimizations on your device.

7. Monitor App Performance

Monitoring app performance is essential to ensure your app runs smoothly and meets user expectations. You can monitor app performance by using various tools and metrics, such as:

  • Firebase Performance Monitoring: This tool allows you to identify and fix performance issues and track the impact of your optimizations.
  • Android Vitals: Use this dashboard to understand how your app performs on real devices and users, improve its quality, and retain users.
  • Android Studio Profilers: Use these tools to inspect and optimize your app performance in real time and to find and fix performance bottlenecks and bugs.

Also Read: The Innovative Fundamentals of Android App Development in 2024!

8. Optimize Threading with Coroutines

Android developers sometimes struggle with thread management, particularly when executing database or network calls. Kotlin Coroutines can increase app responsiveness and simplify threading.

Benefits of coroutines

  • Simplified Asynchronous Code: Reduce callback complexity by writing asynchronous code sequentially.
  • Enhanced UI Responsiveness: Use background threads to carry out lengthy operations, freeing up the UI thread for fluid interactions.
  • Organized Concurrency: By offering organized concurrency, coroutines help to prevent memory leaks and manage task lifecycles.

Building responsive and effective apps with clear, readable code is possible with Coroutines.

9. Utilize Prefetching for Data-Intensive Apps

If your app relies on dynamic content from a server, prefetching can significantly enhance perceived performance.

How prefetching improves performance:

  • Reduced Latency: Preload critical data before the user requests it, ensuring instantaneous data display.
  • Enhanced User Experience: Prefetched content makes your app feel faster and more responsive, even under poor network conditions.
  • Network Optimization: Combine prefetching with caching to minimize redundant server requests.

Prefetching ensures users experience minimal wait times, especially for data-heavy applications like news, social media, or eCommerce apps.

10. Implement Proactive Error Handling with Crashlytics

Performance isn’t just about speed—it’s about stability. If your app crashes frequently, users won’t hesitate to uninstall it. That’s where Firebase Crashlytics comes in.

Benefits of Crashlytics:

  • Real-Time Crash Reports: When a crash occurs, you’ll receive detailed reports instantly, including device information, OS version, and stack traces.
  • Non-Fatal Error Tracking: Identify and fix issues before they escalate into crashes.
  • Crash-Free User Metric: Monitor the percentage of users experiencing a crash-free app experience.

Proactively addressing crashes increases user retention and boosts your app’s reputation on the Play Store.

11. Integrate App Bundles with Play Feature Delivery

Dynamic feature delivery can improve app size and user engagement. Play Feature Delivery allows you to modularize your app and deliver features dynamically.

Why adopt Play Feature Delivery?

  • Reduced Initial Download Size: Only core features are downloaded initially, lowering the app size and increasing installation rates.
  • On-Demand Modules: Users download additional features only when needed, optimizing storage and network usage.
  • Targeted Features: Deliver features based on user location, preferences, or device capabilities, enhancing personalization.

By leveraging Play Feature Delivery, you create a modular app that is both lightweight and highly customizable, improving user satisfaction and retention.

Conclusion

Optimizing Android app performance is challenging and rewarding. By using the advanced techniques discussed in this blog, you can improve your app and thus provide fast, efficient, and satisfying app experiences for users.

If you are looking for a reliable and experienced partner to help you with Android app development and optimization, consider Hurix Digital.

Hurix Digital is a leading digital content solutions provider that offers end-to-end mobile app development services, from ideation and design to development and testing.