Instant Apps Eulogy
summary
Instant Apps target a 15 MB limit and demand concrete engineering tradeoffs: AMO shrinks a Rust native blob from ~18 MB to ~300 KB by stripping gRPC persistence and mapping protos via Uniffi, uses APK Analyzer and Google bloaty to measure savings, and splits features so the instant build only includes the sender path; Cash App uses dynamic feature modules, SplitInstallManager and Android App Bundles to deliver a tiny QR-to-order flow. The ecosystem still has UX, tooling and Play metadata quirks and an AOSP commit flags removal in December.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Instant Apps history
- 3:42Instant Apps vs App Clips
- 7:17AMO’s Bump use case
- 12:34Building Instant Apps challenges
- 15:50AMO’s modular codebase
- 16:12AMO’s Rust integration
- 21:52Cash App’s dynamic features
- 24:47Why dynamic features mattered
- 27:16Cash App’s modular structure
- 30:08Instant App size limits
- 31:13Optimizing app size
- 34:02Three ways AMO reduced app size
- 37:22Instant Apps UX flaws
- 38:48App Clips outperform Instant Apps
- 39:31Farewell to Instant Apps
