I am trying to submit an application in App Store, and I need to decrease its memory a little bit, if this is possible. I tried a method which I am gonna describe below to make my app lighter, but with not luck.
Details
I followed these steps to see what was causing this large size
Make an archive of the project
Distribute it
Save for Enterprise or Ad-Hoc Deployment
Select the .ipa file and changed the extension to .zip
Extract it, and open Payload
Show the Package Contents
Contents
I had .png files with 680 Kb (when I added those where 32 kb approximately), I deleted them and I reduced the size of application by 2 MB. There are other files that take space but not considerably, except one executable file that is taking about 90 % of the .ipa's size.
Question
Is it possible to decrease executable file's size? If not then can you give me a hint where I should look to make my app lighter in terms of size.
P.S I use third party libraries like Vuforia SDK and libraries on GitHUB
How can I reduce the size of this executable file
You cannot reduce the size of the executable inside your built app bundle. This is your code! The only ways to reduce its size are:
Cut code. Obviously you can't do that because you would exclude functionality that makes your app work.
Remove an architecture slice. You should not do that because you want to build for all possible architectures.
Having said that... I have never generated an executable inside the app bundle anywhere near this large. Maybe you are measuring / building wrong:
Make sure you are archiving. Nothing else except an archive is worth measuring.
Make sure that you are generating a Release build when you Archive.
Make sure that your Release build settings include the full compiler optimization (smallest, fastest).
Suggestion how to reduce binary size from Reducing the size of my App:
Compiler Options
Setting the Optimization Level build setting to Fastest, Smallest [-Os]; and the Strip Debug Symbols During Copy build setting to Yes (COPY_PHASE_STRIP = YES) can dramatically lower the size of your compiled binary. These settings are the default for the "Release" configuration in Xcode projects.
Assets are almost always the main culprit of large apps sizes.
If you archive your app and export the IPA you will be able to convert it so a .zip by changing the extension and then unzip and look at the contents of the package.
If you sort by file size you will see which files are the largest. Keep in mind images with transparency are larger.
Some more insight as well: http://bjango.com/articles/pngcompression/
If you're truly concerned about the internals of the executable, build with a link map. That shows sizes by segment and by symbol.
e.g.
# Sections:
# Address Size Segment Section
0x0000AB90 0x00711D30 __TEXT __text
0x0071C8C0 0x00028D34 __TEXT __symbol_stub4
0x007455F4 0x00001A58 __TEXT __stub_helper
0x0074704C 0x00057452 __TEXT __cstring
[…]
# Symbols:
# Address Size File Name
0x000122A0 0x00000020 [ 6] ___Block_byref_object_copy_
0x000122C0 0x0000001C [ 6] ___Block_byref_object_dispose_
0x00012320 0x00000028 [ 6] ___copy_helper_block_78
0x00012348 0x0000001C [ 6] ___destroy_helper_block_79
[…]
I came across an article in the web which explains the process in the following 9 points:
Ensure that you have reached the maximum level of iOS stripping, for
more info on iOS stripping, see this post.
Enabling bitcode DOES increase the size of your over-the-air download.
In our case, it was the difference between 130 and 70MB. If you wish
to turn bitcode off, you can do so in your xcode project, or using a
post build attribute such as this one.
The Launch image in your xcode project is NOT optimized. While running
something through a compression algorithm doesn’t work because Unity
decompresses and stores images without much compression in order to
decrease startup time, it does work for the launch images that are
generated by Untiy after project generation.Run all your images
through a lossless compression algorithm in order to save a few MBs
(10 in our case).
If this isn’t enough, it’s time to start looking at your asset logs.
Run your build in Unity and open the Editor log, it’s this
ridiculously small icon next to your console preferences. In our case,
they are already optimized. With a 111MB in uncompressed assets, we
were able to achieve an over-the-air size of 70MB. Go over each asset
and change the resolution to the lowest possible quality that your
users won’t notice. The best compression setting is PVRTC for iOS.
While you are at it, check out Resource Checker in order to see large
textures in-memory. Reducing the resolution on these will also
decrease build size, as well as memory consumption. Also, please use
sprite atlases – you will see the wonders this does!
Check for unused libraries in your project, or libraries that are
using far too much space for their functionality. Commands such as df
and ls -lh might come in useful here, run these in your project files
and see which files really stand out and need to be reduced in size.
Keep in mind that these individual libraries do not necessarily have
the same build effect as your textures – generally, these are compiled
for multiple architectures, and if a library is 20MB, it generally
only affects your build size by about 6MB, due to the fact that
libraries often include architecture support for i386, arm64, and arm7
in the same library
Check that the /Plugins/Android is not included in your iOS project.
See this post for more information.
Make sure you don’t have any unused scenes in your build settings.
Build your project, and check out the archive before you submit it to
iTunes Connect. You can do so by clicking “Product -> Archive”,
letting it archive, and when it’s done, “Window -> Organizer” to pop
up this interface and find the build location.
Under “Products/Applications/game.app” Run the mv command to turn your
.app into a browsable directory.In this directory you’ll be able to
see a lot of the stuff we did, and also find inspiration for more
things you can do.
Now, there are a lot more things that could result in a bigger than
expected build size, and I’m sure there are a lot more things you can
to do get below it also.
If you’d like to add to this list, or have further questions (I’m usually happy to answer questions), leave a comment below with your specific use case, and I’ll try to help!
All the best,
Pim
If you have already checked all your assets (images, audio, etc... ) just check if you need all the external libraries (3rd party libraries out of the iOS sdk) that you import in your app.
Related
Some iOS 9 devices in the wild seem to crash with the error message that I receive from the very basic crash reporting in Xcode only
dyld: malformed mach-o: load commands size (16464) > 16384
Unfortunately that's all the info I get. I can't even debug or reproduce locally.
Can anyone hint me into the right direction here?
It occurs after updating my Cocoapods, so I guess there's one of them (or their dependency) that misbehaves.
After some investigation of my mach-O binary, I saw that the sizeofcmds is really 16464.
If I understand correctly, there seems to be a load command size limit of 16384, can anyone confirm this?
Does that mean I should remove dylibs and everything should be fine?
At WWDC18 I went to an Apple engineer who is working on dyld. Here’s what he had to say:
The Dyld code is downloadable from https://opensource.apple.com (the one specific to us can be found inside macOS 10.12)
For iOS 9 the maximum size of load commands is indeed 16k aka 1 memory page (There’s no way around it! This is imposed by the OS itself. For customer service telling people to update to iOS 10 (all devices that run iOS 9 can except for iPhone 4S) would be viable.)
Since iOS 10 the maximum size of commands is 32k
Majority of the size of the load commands is determined by strings (paths) of the frameworks (use command otool -L to see them
Possible solutions:
Use less libraries (that was our goto solution thus far, but we will change to umbrella libraries (see below))
Shortening names (might screw up header lookup of cocoa pods, maybe use head maps to fix that inside the Xcode build process → maybe more (high-level) info in WWDC18 session “Behind the scenes of the Xcode Build Process”)
Try to build static archives for libraries (should not have dynamic resources otherwise make copy phases and figure out where resources are)
Build frameworks that re-export other frameworks (umbrella frameworks). Use -reexport-l as a linker flag (not done often) → gonna make some runtime overhead when starting the app, also uses a bit more memory (man ld → for info on re-exports)
The engineer recommended to file a bugreport via bugreport.apple.com, because in the future even hitting the 32k limit is possible.
I found a solution that will (at least temporarily) work for me - but I still encourage everyone to provide a real solution and more detailed insights.
Anyway:
Extract your binary
Xcode Archive
Export as IPA
Rename YourApp.ipa to YourApp.zip and extract
Navigate to the subfolder payload to find your YourApp.app
Right click & Show Package Contents of your YourApp.app file
Copy your binary YourApp (no file extension) to a different location
Investigate your mach-o binary
Run otool -f on your binary
Note the align for both architectures are listed which, for me, says 2^14 (16384). This seems to be the threshold for the size of load commands.
Run otool -l on your binary
You'll see that the different architectures and their load commands are listed - as well as their sizeofcmds (size of commands).
Now the funny thing:
For arm64, the sizeofcmds (16464) was larger than the align (16384), while it wasn't for armv7.
Now I haven't found enough documentation on this, but I assume that align symbolizes a threshold that should not be reached by the load command size. And also that it adjusts automatically (since we are definitely not having that many frameworks in our app, there have to be apps that have more).
So I guess the error came from this unlikely case, that the sizeofcmds was different in between the architectures AND that one of them was actually valid (so that the align was not automatically adjusted).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I am just assuming here and I really really want to understand why this happens.
Solve the issue
Remove frameworks until you are under the sizeofcmds for both architectures.
I know this is not scalable, we were lucky (and stupid) that we still had one barely used framework in there that we could easily remove.
Fortunately this only seems to be an issue on iOS9 and will therefore loose relevance over the next months, nevertheless, we should find out if I'm right
Investigation ideas
My assumption that the align is automatically adjusted could be investigated by just putting in more and more frameworks to see if it actually does.
If so, adding frameworks would also solve the original issue - not nice, but at least slightly more scalable.
Sidenote
I don't feel like I shed enough light on the origins of this issue and I had a lot of assumptions.
While my solution works, I really hope you feel encouraged to investigate this as well and give a better answer.
So here's the problem:
The Mach-O header size is expected to be 16k (optimized for the platform's pagesize). In the reference by rachit it's basically the same thing but the limit is 32K. Both are correct in that this is hard limit of dyld, the loader.
The total size of load commands exceeds this max size. Removing frameworks and libraries works for you because that removes LC_LOAD_DYLIB commands (And, there is no reason why you'd need so many frameworks anyway). Instead of removing frameworks, build your app from the ground up starting with the core frameworks, and adding so long as you get linker errors.
btw, 'Align' has nothing to do with this - Alignment refers to the fat (universal) architecture slices, and doesn't have anything to do with the Mach-O.
I was able to resolve this for my team after reviewing the result of otool -l. Turns out we had the same directory included in our framework search paths 5x causing our dylibs to be added as rpaths 5x.
I just have some problems uploading my app to the appstore.
The problem is the 60MB filesizelimit for armv7! (See Screenshot)
There are almost no embedded images or something like that.
the application-file is only 0,5MB to big, but I'm sure it will increase soon due to next updates
Are there any possibilities to reduce the application size? Or maybe to change some settings for excluding the armv7 and only build for 64bit?
Our App is online since a couple of years and now we got "too big"? I see no possibility to "reduce" the code.
I build with AIR 22 and compiler options "-optimize=true -strict=true"
There's 2 ways.
The first is make your binary under 60MB.
2nd way is setting up project deployment target number.
ths following is I received email from Apple DTS
There are a few approaches to solving this situation:
Look through the suggestions in Q&A 1795, Reducing the size of my app. The section on compiler options is relevant for your scenario. Also, if you have data in your binary, such as long strings, tables, or encoded images, you should move those resources out of your binary and into external files.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/qa/qa1795/_index.html
The 60 MB limit is per architecture in your main executable. Identify sections of your app that would make sense as either a single framework, or as a small number of frameworks, so that they are built into a different binary.
If your app’s minimum deployment can be raised to iOS 9, the limit on executable size is higher, up to 400 MB for the entire executable. This is described at the link below.
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/Chapters/SubmittingTheApp.html
I have a Unity3D project that I've already released for iOS via Xcode. Previously the archive size was about 30-40Mb which I'm happy with.
I've now changed a few things within the Unity project, and rebuilt it for Xcode. Now when I archive it, the size is around 110Mb, which is huge compared to the previous file size. I only changed the logo, and splash screen design.
Also, when I rebuild the older version, the size isn't 30-40Mb anymore, it's 110Mb too!
So I'm guessing this is something to do with the new Xcode for iOS8? Not 100% sure, hence why Im asking.
Thanks.
Try to turn off BitCode. Open XCode => Build Settings => search Enable BitCode. Set it to No.
Have you read this?
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/iphone-playerSizeOptimization.html
Also it can be fault of stripping level, try to use micro mscorlib.
In addition you can take a look at Decrease Your App’s Code Size from Mac App Programming Guide.
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/General/Conceptual/MOSXAppProgrammingGuide/Performance/Performance.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010543-CH9-SW2
I believe part of what is happening here is the additional overhead for the arm64 slice (unless you were already including the arm64 slice previously). I would not expect that much of an increase in size for the arm64, but it would still be roughly X2 on the app binary (minus the resources).
As of Feb 1, Apple requires arm64 support as well as the app being built with the iOS 8 SDK. The default Xcode build setting enables arm64.
What you can do is Show Package Contents on the xarchive and work your way to the app executable binary. You can then compare the size difference on the app executable binary from before and now. You can also run lipo -info on it to see all the slices from before and now. Note I am assuming you have an older xarchive to compare with.
I would then probably diff the rest of the resources (use something like Araxis merge) to see the differences in the files. This will let you see what resource files changed or got added. If your diff is only the executable, then you have isolated were the size difference has come from.
The 'Estimated App Store Size' reflects the installed app size, not the download size.
I'm basing this off the following test:
(Unity app build) Estimated App Store Size: 140.8 MB, size listed in store: 33.4 MB. The splash images alone inside the package add up to 30 megs uncompressed (all my jpegs were converted to pngs) so there's no way the installed size is 33.4 MB. After install, if I go to settings -> general -> usage -> Manage Storage I see the app is 141 MB installed.
I'm not sure how to estimate the download size, which is what matters if you have an app you want to be downloaded over cellular network and needs to be under 100 MB downloaded.
I added this as a comment to the question, but I wish I had read this as an answer, so here it is.
I am uploading my iOS application on iTunes. I am using MonoTouch for compiling my LibGdx Game for iOS. In Android it is hardly 7-8mb. But When I upload on iTunes AppStore then its goes to 78 mb. I dont know why ? Please Let me know.
I have also received this error from Apple.
Dear developer,
We have discovered one or more issues with your recent delivery for "Run Panda Run: Racing". To process your delivery, the following issues must be corrected:
Invalid Executable Size - The executable size of 72037504 bytes exceeds the maximum allowed size of 60 MB.
It's hard to give a definite answer without more details. There's a lot of things that can affect the size of the applications. Let's start with the basic.
What you should check:
First, ensure that your application is not being build with Don't link. That will create very big applications since you'll be AOT'ing nearly the full .NET framework that Xamarin.iOS ships;
Second, make sure you're building for a single architecture (ARMv7). FAT binaries (e.g. ARMv7 and ARMv7s) are build two times and needs twice the space;
Third make sure you have not enabled the Debug build (it's possible to do so in Release build, it's a checkbox). That will create larger binaries to support debugging;
Fourth make sure you're using the LLVM compiler. It takes more time to compile but it generates better (and smaller) code;
Those initial checks are pretty easy to do and are the most common reasons for getting very large binaries.
To understand where the size come from you need to know how the application are built.
The main difference between the Android and iOS version is that JIT'ing (just-in-time compilation) is not allowed on iOS (Apple's rules).
That means the code must be AOT'ed (ahead-of-time compilation) and that process creates much larger executables (because IL is way more compact than native code);
If your code is generic-heavy then the final binary can get quite large since it will need to natively compile every generic possibilities (many cases can be shared, but value-types cannot).
What you can do to reduce size:
First try to reduce your managed code size. The easy way to do this is the enable the linker on every assemblies, i.e. Link all assemblies in your project options.
Many people think it's not worth linking their own code - because they know it will be needed at runtime (so the linker cannot remove it) or else they would not have written that code.
That's half true. The linker might not be able to remove most of your application code but if you're using 3rd party assemblies they are not likely 100% used. The linker can remove that extra code (and also remove, from the SDK, all the code that is kept to support that unneeded code). The more shared code you have the more the linker can help you.
Less IL code means faster AOT time, which translate to faster builds and smaller final binaires (including the executable size).
Note: there's a lot of documents and blog entries on how you can control the linker to skip some assemblies, some types or method from being processed/removed.
Second try to reduce your native size. If you're building native libraries then have a second look at them as they will be statically (not dynamically) linked to your final binary (another rule for iOS applications). Some of them might not be worth (feature wise) their weight in your final binary (and there might be lighter alternatives).
Debugging should not be enabled, as it will make the build unnecessarily large.
For more information refer : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/deploy-test/app-distribution/app-store-distribution/publishing-to-the-app-store?tabs=windows
I had the same problem but in my case I had minimum os version set to 8 in the info.plist causing a larger .ipa file. I changed this to version 10 and was able to pass the size requirements. Even 10 is a bit generous
In building an objective-c static library, I noticed that the .a file (fat file from simulator and iPhone) is quite large. In particular, it was originally 5.7mb. I found this post and set my build settings Generate Debug Symbols to No, decreasing the lib size to 1.7mb.
This was a big improvement, but is there anything else that can be done? The implementation and header files alone take up ~100kb.
In case it's part of your concern, a static library is just the relevant .o files archived together plus some bookkeeping. So a 1.7mb static library — even if the code within it is the entire 1.7mb — won't usually add 1.7mb to your product. The usual rules about dead code stripping will apply.
Beyond that you can reduce the built size of your code. The following probably isn't a comprehensive list.
In your target's build settings look for 'Optimization Level'. By switching that to 'Fastest, Smallest -Os' you'll permit the compiler to sacrifice some speed for size.
Make sure you're building for thumb, the more compact ARM code. Assuming you're using LLVM that means making sure you don't have -mno-thumb anywhere in your project settings.
Also consider which architectures you want to build for. Apple doesn't allow submission of an app that supports both ARMv6 and the iPhone 5 screen and have dropped ARMv6 support entirely from the latest Xcode. So there's probably no point including that at this point.