Google Play releases new algorithm; focuses on smaller apps

Google Play recently rolled out the new delta algorithm. Noting that Android users installed over 64 billion apps in the past year from the Google Play Store; Google’s new algorithm now aims at reducing the size of app updates.

This is being done to bring about improvements to applications. A delta update only updates certain files in the APK, without having the need to update the whole APK. Google stated that 98% of app updates are delta updates to the APK, which also helped users save data.

More about the new algorithm

It is named ‘bsdiff’ and it was created to make updates and app downloads smaller. This way, they wouldn’t take that much out of data plans. The new delta update can reduce the size of patches by 50% or more. Moreover, information about data used and download size is displayed in a clearer way.

There’s more! APK Expansion Files allows developers to include additional large files up to 2GB in size, like high resolution graphics or media files. Download size of initial installs can be reduced by 12%, while update by 65% in average. Users can view the actual download size, not just the APK size.