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Comment by socalgal2 | Hacker News Reader

Average, yes, probably an exaggeration. Some apps

iOS:

    wechat:          740meg
    gmail:           672
    google chat:     585
    uber:            582
    tiktok:          572
    headspace:       498
    instagram:       467
    doulingo:        462
    bank of america: 456
    capital one:     435
    expedia:         412
    linkedin:        402
    doordash:        392
    google:          379
    facebook:        365
    unitied airlines:355
    chase:           352
    google photos:   348
    line:            346
    amex:            339
    google maps:     336
    youtube:         329
    booking.com:     320
    citi:            319
    amazon music:    317
    snapchat:        316
    lyft:            307
    wells fargo:     292
    strava:          283
    twitch:          279
    rotten tomatoes: 262
    airbnb:          254
    youtube music:   245
    whatsapp:        239
    mlb:             220
    discord:         212
    tinder:          202

of course Apple doesn't list the size of their own apps like Apple Maps, Photos, Music, etc...

I am quite surprised at a few apps I know are just a webpage, because I can to go to the webpage and see it's exactly the same, are still 40meg to 80meg. I'd expect them be able to be as small as a few K. Open a webview, navigate to https://mycompany.com. The end

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> uber: 582

Not to defend Uber, but there was a post here some time ago where one engineer explained why it's so large (sadly can't find it anymore): it's due to a lot of different implementations for different markets (some masks may have slight differences in different countries) and their choise to re-implement the masks multiple times.

A few different UIs don't justify hundreds of extra megabytes. We just collectively stopped caring.

UI definitions should add very little storage space. Different images and videos might add a lot.

> of course Apple doesn't list the size of their own apps like Apple Maps, Photos, Music, etc...

You can find that in the phone storage settings:

    iOS:           12 G
    Keynote:      498 M
    Numbers:      482 M
    Pages:        455 M
    Clips:        213 M
    Maps:          81 M
    Watch:         70 M
    Find My:       60 M
    Music:         38 M
    iTunes U:      35 M
    Support:       34 M
    Podcasts:      32 M
    Books:         31 M
    iCloud Drive:  30 M
    Freeform:      19 M
    Fitness:       18 M
    Notes:         17 M
    Journal:       15 M
    Home:          10 M
    App Store:      8 M
    Weather:        8 M
    Mail:           7 M
    Files:          4 M
    Health:         3 M
    Measure:        3 M
    Voice Memos:    3 M
    Calendar:       2 M
    Clock:          2 M
    Safari:         2 M
    Shortcuts:      2 M
    Translate:      2 M
    TV:             2 M
    Calculator:     1 M
    Facetime:       1 M
    iTunes Store:   1 M
    Tips:           1 M
    Wallet:       934 K
    Messages:     860 K
    Photos:       791 K
    Compass:      712 K
    Camera:       635 K
    Contacts:     598 K
    Phone:        570 K
    Magnifier:    516 K
    Passwords:    213 K

There's also an "Apple Inc." listing, which appears to be "shared" between a lot of their apps which clocks in at 204M

My takeaway from having gone through the list and compared to the various 3rd party apps:

1) Apps can absolutely be smaller. Plenty of stuff in the <200MB range including things like Signal, OBD Fusion and Infuse

2) Games are often big, but there's a surprising number of "simple" apps that are larger than some of the games

3) The largest apps seem to be from companies that you would expect to be doing the most tracking of your data

4) Apple's first party app sizes probably explain a little about why they weren't in a hurry to upgrade storage sizes

> Maps: 81 M

Is MapKit considered iOS or Maps?

No idea, those are the numbers as reported in the settings app. I would assume it's part of the OS since it's a framework for other apps to tap into mapping functionality. For comparison Sygic is 324 MB. Waze is 170 MB, Tom Tom is 251 MB, Magic Earth is 135 MB and OSM And is 238 MB

I thought these couldn't possibly be right and you must be including their storage and cache usage, but I'm seeing similar reported on my iPhone. Rounded to the nearest megabyte.

   Gmail: 612mb
   Facebook: 359mb
   YouTube: 303mb
   Amex: 365mb

I'm still skeptical (or just hopeful?) that there's some storage accounting bug here, and it's including caches. I'm not in a place to plug it into Xcode right now, maybe someone else can check the actual IPAs?

edit: also, I do see Apple's own apps in mine. Music reports 39mb; Photos 791kB (lol?)

Amex being 300mb is genuinely hilarious. What does that app even do?

Probably doing CHIA in the background. ;)

its including cache + data files not just an 'APP'

my youtube is literally 10gb because I use it a lot, doesnt mean youtube is "bloated" or "heavy"

I am leaving out the "data" figure in my counts. As I said, I think there's a bug/misrepresentation in the figures shown in iOS settings.

they use react native maybe

On Android, is the Gmail app actually a PWA? Saying this as Google tried to push PWA hard, but it doesn’t seem like they do it for their own stuff.

Now I understand why those 128 GB get full so quick.

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