Posted by Johan Bay – Software Engineer

A small and fast app is key to a fantastic user experience. That’s why we built R8, our app optimizer, which streamlines your app by removing unused code and resources, rewriting code to optimize runtime performance, and more.

With the release of version 8.12.0 of the Android Gradle Plugin (AGP), we’re introducing optimized resource shrinking, an even better way to shrink your app with R8. By opting in, you can make your app smaller, which means smaller downloads, faster installations, and less memory used on your users’ devices. The result is a faster startup, improved rendering, and fewer ANRs.

How it works

Resource shrinking for Android apps has been around for a long time, with several improvements made along the way– for instance, shrinking the resource table (resources.arsc) is now a default optimization.

The new approach improves resource shrinking by fully integrating it with the existing code optimization pipeline. In the new approach, R8 optimizes both code and resource references at the same time ensuring that all resources referenced exclusively from unused code are identified as unused and then removed. This completely eliminates the need for the unconditional keep rules generated by AAPT2 (the resource packaging tool for Android) and provides much more fine-grained and precise information for discarding unused code and resources

This is an improvement over the existing pipeline where code and resource optimization are separate. In the existing pipeline, AAPT2 generates keep rules to unconditionally keep classes referenced from resources. Then, R8 optimization runs with these keep rules. After R8 is done optimizing and shrinking the code, it scans the remaining code to build a graph of all the resources referenced directly or indirectly. However, the unconditional AAPT2 rules often keep code that is otherwise unused, which in turn causes R8 to keep both the unused code and the unused resources referenced by it.

How to use it

First, turn on R8 optimization with resource shrinking, by using the following in your build.gradle.kts file:

android {
  buildTypes {
    release {
      isMinifyEnabled = true
      isShrinkResources = true
      …
    }
  }
}

Turn on the new optimized resource shrinking pipeline by adding the following to your gradle.properties file:

android.r8.optimizedResourceShrinking=true

Benefits

The optimized resource shrinking pipeline has shown significant improvements over the existing implementation. For apps that share significant resources and code across different form factor verticals, we measured improvements of over 50% in app size. Smaller apps see improvements as well – for example, in Androidify we see the following gains:

The table shows the progressive improvements in size as additional optimizations are enabled, from no shrinking to optimized resource shrinking. The cells marked with an asterisk (*) indicate improved numbers compared to the previous row. Enabling R8 trims the size of your DEX, while enabling resource shrinking removes unused resources in both the res folder and in the resource table, but does not change the DEX size further, and finally, optimized resource shrinking further reduces the size by removing both resources and DEX code since it can trace references across the DEX and resource boundary.

Next steps

Starting with AGP 9.0.0, optimized resource shrinking becomes the standard behavior for any project that has the resource shrinker turned on.

Check out the newly updated documentation to try optimized resource shrinking and let us know if you encounter any problems on the issue tracker.

Posted by Xavier Ducrohet – Tech Lead, Android Studio and Adarsh Fernando – Group Product Manager, Android Studio

Last year, we doubled our release frequency for Android Studio with the introduction of Feature Drops, a change designed to bring you new features and improvements more quickly. Today, we’re excited to announce the next evolution in our release schedule: we’re moving to monthly stable releases of Android Studio.

This new cadence means you’ll be able to get your hands on the latest features and critical improvements, faster than ever before. Here’s what you can expect: every few months, we’ll introduce a version that contains the latest IntelliJ platform version, such as Android Studio Narwhal based on IntelliJ 2025.1. You’ll then see Feature Drops each month that include important bug fixes and new functionality you’ll want to try out, until it’s time to release Android Studio with the next platform version of IntelliJ.

You’ve actually already experienced this new release cadence with Android Studio Narwhal! In the last Feature Drop release we were able to take features such as Agent Mode from Canary to the Stable channel faster than ever before, making it possible for you to try out new features, faster!

Why Monthly Releases?

You told us waiting for the next major release to get a critical bug fix or a quality-of-life improvement can be frustrating. With the move to monthly releases, we can deliver these updates to you without the long delays. This means you’ll have access to the features you want and the fixes you need, right when you need them.
It’s important to note that the Android Emulator and the Android Gradle Plugin will continue to be updated separately from Android Studio at a pace of every two months. And, as always, you don’t need to update these components to download and use the latest stable version of the IDE each month.

Our Commitment to Quality

A faster release cadence doesn’t mean a compromise on quality. In fact, our ability to release more frequently is a direct result of our long-term investment in our testing infrastructure. This effort began with Project Marble, a concerted effort to improve the quality and testing of Android Studio. Since then, we’ve been continuously improving and tooling our testing strategy to be more reliable, and to get feedback from those tests faster. Last year, we reached a point where we could confidently double our releases, and now, we’re ready to take the next step with monthly updates. This means you’ll see releases 2X more often than before!

We’re also continuing to provide early access to stable-ready releases. Previously, we’ve provided these opportunities first through Beta releases. With our investments in detecting and addressing issues earlier, we’re able to take a release from Canary directly into our Release Candidate (RC) channel with a stable-ready level of quality and polish. This gives you a chance to try out the latest features and improvements before they’re released to the stable channel and to provide us with valuable feedback.

Update Monthly and Help Us Improve

We encourage you to update to the latest stable version of Android Studio each month to take advantage of the latest features and improvements. Your feedback is essential to helping us make Android Studio the best it can be.

Here’s how you can get involved:

• Download Android Studio Narwhal 3 Feature Drop: It’s currently available in the Canary channel and is the best way to get early access to new features and to provide us with feedback before a release is finalized. If you want a more stable build, download this version as soon as the Release Candidate becomes available.
• Report a bug: If you encounter an issue, please let us know by reporting a bug. This helps us to identify and fix issues more quickly.

We’re excited about this new chapter for Android Studio and we’re confident that it will help you to build better apps, faster. As always, you can be part of our vibrant Android developer community on LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, or X.