Deconstructing Flutter vol. 14: Obfuscation & Minification

Smaller apps download faster and use less storage. Obfuscation makes your code harder to reverse engineer, protecting your work. Both help improve user experience and app security.

Good Start

• Measuring your app's size:
  This official guide explains how to measure your Flutter app's size and why debug builds don't represent what users download. Learn how to analyze your app's components and identify opportunities for optimization.

• Strategies To Reduce Flutter App Binary Size:
  A look at multiple strategies, including optimizing images and fonts, removing unused code, using app bundles, and implementing ProGuard for Android. This article offers practical examples that can significantly reduce your app size.

• Reducing Flutter App Size | 5 Things I've Learnt:
  Practical tips, including optimizing image assets with SVG and WebP formats, using ProGuard, enabling tree shaking, implementing code obfuscation, and generating split APKs.

Obfuscation

• Obfuscate Dart code:
  Learn how to implement code obfuscation in Flutter, which makes your code harder to reverse engineer. The guide covers how to use the --obfuscate and --split-debug-info flags and how to read obfuscated stack traces.

Tree Shaking

• Explain the "Tree shaking" Mechanism in Flutter:
  This article explains how the tree shaking mechanism analyzes your codebase to create smaller, more efficient app bundles.

• The Tree Shaking Mechanism in Flutter:
  A deep technical dive into the Flutter Engine's source code to explore how tree shaking works during the compilation process. This article is perfect for developers who want to understand the underlying mechanics.

• Optimizing performance in Flutter web apps with tree shaking and deferred loading:
  While focused on web apps, this official Flutter article provides valuable insights into how tree shaking works by default and how to combine it with deferred loading for maximum performance benefits.

Deferred components

• Deferred components for Android and web:
  Learn how to implement deferred components to download additional code and assets at runtime rather than during initial installation. This technique is especially useful for large apps where certain features are only used by a subset of users.

Analysis Tools

• Use the app size tool:
  Master Flutter's built-in app size tool to analyze your app's size components and identify opportunities for optimization. The tool provides visual breakdowns through treemaps and tables, helping you target the largest contributors to your app size.