[Android General] hemantmeena1990:
****Your warranty now void***

I am not responsible for crashing of apps or of bootlooping of your device, be sure you know how to get your device recovered using recovery(obviously custom one like twrp)

Hello guys, i am a new user here (not dev lol) and I have a old android device (codename:lettuce) and people like me who have low storage phones suffer problem due to apps getting bigger and bigger everyday.

No more stupids talks lets get to work.

Info: I recommend you to reduce the size of those user apps which you do not update frequently as after every update they will get replace by new one. And I definitely recommend to use app reduction on system integrated apps as it will allow you to move user apps into system on generated free space:D

Prerequisites:

1. Root Explorer app

2. ZArchiever app

3. Little knowledge of file managing

There are two independent methods to reduce size of any apk or bundled apk. You can either follow both or one or none:p

Method 1: Compressing APK's "resources.arsc" ( it is present inside apk you can see it using any archive app, i recommend ZArchiver)

Steps:

1. Search for apps which have >=10MB of "resources.arsc" file in the apk or bundled apk files and mark them for the operation.

2. Copy the apk into a dedicated folder in local storage of your device.

3.Open ZArchiver and open the apk's contents using "view" button

4.Extract "resources.arsc" and then again open the same apk.

5. Now tap on add button located in lower right corner and use file icon.

6.Now select the extracted "resources.arsc" file, check the compression level to fastest and add

7.Magic happened, apk size reduced

8.Move and replace the newly compressed apk or bundle apk with the installed one (make sure you force close the corresponding app first) and change the apk permission to 644.

Tips:

1.Do not compress files at ultra as it will slow down loading of images, icons, and other stuffs.

2. Settings have >=30MB of resources

Method 2: Removing "lib" folder inside those apps' apk or bundled apk which extract "lib" folder during installation like Youtube, Maps, Hangouts and many more. Highly recommended for system integrated apps, It is my advice to do not use this method on user apps.

Info:

1.This method should not be applied on Play Store and Google Play Services.

Steps.

1. ***Very Important*** Only for those apps which are installed either as system or user. Applying this method on backed-up apks will corrupt them. Do not touch these "lib" folders "/system/(app or priv-app)/*app_name*/lib" and "/data/app/*app_name/lib"

2.Copy the apk which fulfill condition for this method and extract lib folder using ZArchiver.

3. Here comes boring task, open any file manager you prefer then create and replace all ".so" files present in "lib" and its child folders with blank files ".so" with ***EXTACT SAME NAME*** nothing change in name or neither absence of any filename..

4. You may choose big ".so" files only greater than ~1MB only and leave others untouched.

5.Now after replacing the lib files with blank one, get back to ZArchiver,.open the apk from which u extracted lib folder then tap "add" button in lower right corner, tap upper file icon and then select the extracted and edited lib folder by tapping its icon, change compression level to ultra and tap add.

6.Now you have a apk file with fake lib files.

7.Force stop the app and replace apk file with edited one and set permission to 644.

8.Enjoy;)