Brand new build has a really large bundle size

[calebpanza]

Hey there!

I'm working on implementing an App Clip on an existing project and figured I would give this package a try!

Before doing so on my existing app, I tested it out on a brand new Expo SDK 51 project. When trying to deploy it to TestFlight for testing, I was declined due to the Clip being over 15mb.

After testing over and over again, I continue to discover that the uncompressed size (through the App Size Report generated in Xcode) is over 9mb. When using an app that includes Expo Router, the size is over 14mb. The project only has a single JS file in it.

I'm hoping that I'm just doing something wrong on my end and would love to know if it's just me or if this issue is able to be replicated by others?

[yefim]

try setting your deploymentTarget to "17.0". This will increase the size limit to 50mb

[calebpanza]

This is great! Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check this out, for sure!

[pdyby]

I've done everything to try and minimise the bundle size but the smallest I can get the App Clip is 16mb 😭
The last thing I tried was switching from Yarn to NPM. This could make a difference for someone who is close to getting below the 15mb limit.
I use AWS Cognito which is quite a large library so it makes it hard to get below 15mb, even after reducing the library size by over 75% by tweaking the imports.

[pdyby]

try setting your deploymentTarget to "17.0". This will increase the size limit to 50mb

Be aware that if your app is > 15mb, you can't open it by scanning a QR code! With this target set.

[pdyby]

This is great! Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check this out, for sure!

What JS Engine are you using? I was using hermes and my App Clip was 16mb. I switched to JSC and it is now below 12mb! 😄

[calebpanza]

That's really interesting! I could try that. Unfortunately, this project is requiring that we qualify for use of the QR codes

[nathan-ahn]

I'd recommend avoiding any large packages like AWS's Cognito when trying to create a minimal App Clip. As a personal anecdote, I've previously switched authentication providers instead of trying to support Cognito's massive size requirements on web. App Clip size limitations would be similar.

If you're trying to optimize your bundle size for an existing application, I'd recommend checking out the new .clip extension added in v0.5.0 which allows you to remove heavy components or other large files from the App Clip bundle. However, this won't do much for the boilerplate application bundle size issues.

Hopefully, an implementation of #1 can help with this issue.

My current recommendation is to bite the bullet of > 15 MB and switch to minimum iOS 17. If that's not an option, then you'll likely need to hyper-optimize the size of your App Clip by just writing it entirely natively.

[tsmusty]

Hi all,

I’m building an App Clip with React Native (Expo + Xcode). I’ve uninstalled dependencies, excluded assets, and stripped things down, but the size doesn’t change. The Unix Executable File alone is ~16MB and seems unaffected by what I remove.

Has anyone found a way to shrink the executable or overall App Clip size? Any tips would help.

[nathan-ahn]

Be sure to follow Apple's guide on verifying the size of App Clip when evaluating the bundled size. The executable doesn't accurately reflect the submitted size which Apple uses for its 10/15/100 MB limits. Viewing the size displayed on TestFlight is the most surefire way for evaluation here.

React Native unfortunately has a large baseline bundle. There's several optimization techniques (some highlighted above) that can be used to try to optimize, but if you're targeting an extremely slim App Clip (<10 MB), you may want to just write it completely separately in Swift. You would still be able to use React Native for your main app and just link the fully native App Clip with something like expo-apple-targets.

[tsmusty]

So what I mean is after I archive my app on Xcode to determine the size. The uncompressed size is 18mb and when I unzipped I could see that the app clips executable file was what took over 16mb the rest like assets and all were just in kbs which is not an issue.

[tsmusty]

Be sure to follow Apple's guide on verifying the size of App Clip when evaluating the bundled size. The executable doesn't accurately reflect the submitted size which Apple uses for its 10/15/100 MB limits. Viewing the size displayed on TestFlight is the most surefire way for evaluation here.

React Native unfortunately has a large baseline bundle. There's several optimization techniques (some highlighted above) that can be used to try to optimize, but if you're targeting an extremely slim App Clip (<10 MB), you may want to just write it completely separately in Swift. You would still be able to use React Native for your main app and just link the fully native App Clip with something like expo-apple-targets.

Hi, I tried the swift method using the expo apple targets. Which started going fine but it also imports all the dependencies from react native

[nathan-ahn]

@tsmusty I'd recommend exploring how others have fixed the issue of multi-target Pods in the iOS development space. This issue is outside the scope of this package.

[pdyby]

If you're still using Hermes, you will need to switch to JSC.

[tsmusty]

I have switched along time ago, I even had to totally uninstall firebase from and switch to using apis but the size still remains. No change @pdyby

[tsmusty]

@nathan-ahn please do you have any link?