An Android App Bundle is a new upload format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, but defers APK generation and signing to Google Play.
Google Play’s new app serving model, called Dynamic Delivery, then uses your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each user’s device configuration, so they download only the code and resources they need to run your app. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to support different devices, and users get smaller, more optimized downloads.
Why should we use this new format?
- Dynamic Delivery: Google Play’s new app serving model, called Dynamic Delivery, uses your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each user’s device configuration, so they download only the code and resources they need to run your app. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to support different devices, and users get smaller, more optimized downloads.
- No need to manually manage multiple APKs: You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to support different devices, and users get smaller, more optimized downloads. For example, now you don’t have to create multiple APKs for devices with different screen resolutions.
- Dynamic Feature Module: These modules contain features and assets that you can decide not to include when users first download and install your app. Using the Play Core Library, your app can later request to download those modules as dynamic feature APKs. For example, a video calling feature and camera filters can be downloaded later on demand.
- Reduced APK size: Using Split APK mechanism(explained later), Google Play can break up a large app into smaller, discrete packages that are installed on a user’s device as required. On average, apps published with app bundles are 20% smaller in size.
How to build an app bundle?
You can easily build your app bundle using Android Studio(3.2 Canary 14+) or using command line interface. The generated app bundle will be stored at app/build/outputs/bundle/buildVariant/bundle.aab.
Go to Build and select
> Build Bundle(s)/APK(s)Build Bundle(s)
You may also split the apk according to the app needs in application level build.gradle
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bundle { language { enableSplit = true } density { enableSplit = true } abi { enableSplit = true } } |