Expert explains why your iPhone apps can balloon in size and even grow beyond 1GB

If you’re an iPhone user, you may have noticed that some apps have grown massively in size in recent years, and now an expert has explained why.

When you download an app from the App Store, it details the size of the file. 

However, some eagle-eyed iPhone users have noticed that certain apps are huge compared to even just a couple of years back – and once installed, they can grow even bigger. 

But why does it happen, and – more importantly – is there anything you can do to stop it?

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Apple iPhone iOS apps tend to be much larger than Android ones, here’s why

Alongside the enduring battle with your phone’s battery life, you might also have issues with storage. 

If your iPhone is running low on space, it can slow everything down and make your phone more frustrating to use. 

Those who do happen to be short on space might pop into their apps and have a look at what’s eating away at all their iPhones’ memory – and it’s here that they might spot something interesting. 

Several folks who have done just that have taken to social media in recent months to question the size of some apps. 

In a recent post on Reddit, one iPhone user questioned why ‘apps are so big nowadays’, and shared a screenshot showing the the Gmail app was now using up 677 MB of space ‘without documents,’.

And others took to X to share screenshots showing the same app had increased by around 100 MB in just one year. 

Fortunately, the team from Emerge Tools had the answers. 

The experts did a deep dive into iOS apps, which are typically a fair bit larger than their Android counterparts. 

They explained that the Apple apps tend to come with a bunch of ‘additional bloat’, for example, when downloading the Gmail iOS app, it comes with all the localizations it supports, even though you’re typically only going to use one.

All of these localizations add up to 130 MB alone, which is actually larger than the uncompressed size of the entire Gmail Android app, Emerge Tools reported. 

Other bloating issues include duplicate files, and special symbols are only needed during development and not required to make the app run.

Alongside this, as developers improve and update apps over time, the files become bigger, which is why you see some apps grow by 100 MB in about 12 months.

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And its download size is only part of the problem

And the initial download size is only part of the issue. 

Once you have installed an app and used it for a while, it’ll quickly begin to grow – this is because they collect data in the cache, while additional updates and patches can also increase the app’s size. 

And some types of apps are worse than others. 

Unfortunately, some of the worst offenders when it comes to ‘high-growth apps’ are the ones we use the most.

Social media sites, like TikTok and Instagram, messaging services, like Telegram and WhatsApp, and streaming sites, such as YouTube and Spotify, are all known to rapidly grow in size once installed on your devices.

While there’s not much you can do about the size of an app when you download it, you can keep on top of its ongoing growth by regularly clearing the cache, deleting any downloads you no longer need, or starting fresh by uninstalling and reinstalling the app.

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