App size by phonegap and crosswalk

[Ashwin_A_]

Hey guys,

I have noticed that my app is a few kb without Crosswalk and 50mb with crosswalk. And that's just the apk. Upon installation, it goes upto 104 mb.

Can anything be done here to reduce app size, apart from keeping crosswalk shared?

[PaulF_IntelCorp · Accepted solution]

Using Crosswalk with PhoneGap Build requires that both the ARM and x86 libraries are included in the final APK, due to the way PhoneGap Build works compared to the way the retired XDK build system worked. If you want to use Crosswalk you will have to work with the increased size of your APK file and the increased footprint on the device.

Otherwise:

I recommend that you consider supporting Android 4.4 or later or, for even simpler support, consider supporting only Android 5.0 and later. When you start supporting Android 5.0 and later, you can remove Crosswalk entirely from your app and just use the more capable built-in webview that is part of Android 5.0 and later. Android 4.4 includes an older webview that is based on Chrome 30, and has some limitations compared to that in Android 5+.

The webview in Android 4.3, and earlier versions of Android, is based on an ancient webview that is very difficult to work with when building HTML5 apps, thus the reason for using Crosswalk for those systems. However, if you can limit your app to installation on Android 5 and later (or, worst case, Android 4.4 and later) you can quit using Crosswalk.

See this forum post for additional details > https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-xdk/topic/721675#comment-1908468 <

[Ashwin_A_]

Thanks a ton mate. That works out perfectly for me.