How I slimmed down my iOS app

Generated on 3/6/2025

1 search

To slim down your iOS app, you can consider several strategies discussed in various WWDC sessions:

Optimize 3D Assets: If your app uses 3D assets, you can optimize them for spatial computing by keeping the polygon count low, compressing textures, and using unlit materials. This can significantly reduce the size and improve the performance of your app. For more details, you can refer to the session Optimize your 3D assets for spatial computing.
Use On-Demand Resources: For games or apps with large assets, consider using on-demand resources. This allows you to download additional data after the app is installed, reducing the initial app size. This approach is discussed in the session Design advanced games for Apple platforms.
Dynamic Type and Scaled Metrics: Implementing Dynamic Type and using scaled metrics for images can help in optimizing the app's UI for different text sizes without bloating the app with multiple assets. This is covered in the session Get started with Dynamic Type.
App Intents Framework: Streamline your app's features using the App Intents framework, which allows you to express core concepts once and reuse them across various features like Siri, widgets, and shortcuts. This can help in reducing redundant code and assets. More information can be found in the session Bring your app’s core features to users with App Intents.

By applying these strategies, you can effectively reduce the size of your iOS app while maintaining or even enhancing its functionality and user experience.

Provide feedback

Design advanced games for Apple platforms

Learn how to adapt your high-end game so it feels at home on Mac, iPad, and iPhone. We’ll go over how to make your game look stunning on different displays, tailor your input and controls to be intuitive on each device, and take advantage of Apple technologies that deliver great player experiences.

Bring your app to Siri

Learn how to use App Intents to expose your app’s functionality to Siri. Understand which intents are already available for your use, and how to create custom intents to integrate actions from your app into the system. We’ll also cover what metadata to provide, making your entities searchable via Spotlight, annotating onscreen references, and much more.

Migrate your TVML app to SwiftUI

SwiftUI helps you build great apps on all Apple platforms and is the preferred toolkit for bringing your content into the living room with tvOS 18. Learn how to use SwiftUI to create familiar layouts and controls from TVMLKit, and get tips and best practices.

SwiftUI essentials

Join us on a tour of SwiftUI, Apple’s declarative user interface framework. Learn essential concepts for building apps in SwiftUI, like views, state variables, and layout. Discover the breadth of APIs for building fully featured experiences and crafting unique custom components. Whether you’re brand new to SwiftUI or an experienced developer, you’ll learn how to take advantage of what SwiftUI has to offer when building great apps.

Port advanced games to Apple platforms

Discover how simple it can be to reach players on Apple platforms worldwide. We’ll show you how to evaluate your Windows executable on Apple silicon, start your game port with code samples, convert your shader code to Metal, and bring your game to Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Explore enhanced Metal tools that understand HLSL shaders to validate, debug, and profile your ported shaders on Metal.

Optimize your 3D assets for spatial computing

Dive into an end-to-end workflow for optimized 3D asset creation. Discover best practices for optimizing meshes, materials, and textures in your digital content creation tool. Learn how to harness shader graph, baking, and material instances to enhance your 3D scene while optimizing performance. Take advantage of native tools to work more effectively with your assets and improve your app’s performance.

Dive deep into volumes and immersive spaces

Discover powerful new ways to customize volumes and immersive spaces in visionOS. Learn to fine-tune how volumes resize and respond to people moving around them. Make volumes and immersive spaces interact through the power of coordinate conversions. Find out how to make your app react when people adjust immersion with the Digital Crown, and use a surrounding effect to dynamically customize the passthrough tint in your immersive space experience.

Get started with HealthKit in visionOS

Discover how to use HealthKit to create experiences that take full advantage of the spatial canvas. Learn the capabilities of HealthKit on the platform, find out how to bring an existing iPadOS app to visionOS, and explore the special considerations governing HealthKit during a Guest User session. You’ll also learn ways to use SwiftUI, Swift Charts, and Swift concurrency to craft innovative experiences with HealthKit.

Get started with Dynamic Type

Dynamic Type lets people choose their preferred text size across the system and all of their apps. To help you get started supporting Dynamic Type, we’ll cover the fundamentals: How it works, how to find issues with scaling text in your app, and how to take practical steps using SwiftUI and UIKit to create a great Dynamic Type experience. We’ll also show how you can best use the Large Content Viewer to make navigation controls accessible to everyone.

Bring your app’s core features to users with App Intents

Learn the principles of the App Intents framework, like intents, entities, and queries, and how you can harness them to expose your app’s most important functionality right where people need it most. Find out how to build deep integration between your app and the many system features built on top of App Intents, including Siri, controls and widgets, Apple Pencil, Shortcuts, the Action button, and more. Get tips on how to build your App Intents integrations efficiently to create the best experiences in every surface while still sharing code and core functionality.