How We Solve The Sideloading Crash After App Bundle Implementation
As a technology company, Tokopedia provides many services that make customers’ lives easier. Initially, Tokopedia started with a marketplace where sellers able to meet buyers online. After a few years, we entered digital goods such as top-up phone credit and pay utility bills. All those features are available in a single application, and it is a challenge for us to keep the app download size as small as we can.
Google introduced the App Bundle in 2018 at Google I/O as a new publishing format. This new format aims to reduce the app download size by separating the base and some configuration installations. To create an App Bundle from an existing android application, we only need to update the build.gradle file and don’t need to change the rest of the source code.
The Implementation
Tokopedia has implemented the App Bundle format since early 2019. With this format, we can save more than 25% of download size compared to split apks generally.
But the implementation was not so smooth in the beginning. After we published with App Bundle format, we got several new crashes related to the splash screen. The crashes occurred on random devices and OS versions.
The Problem
After several investigations, we realized that the crash came from the android phone that installed the Tokopedia app from other app stores or shared apk (not from the Play Store). In this article, we will share how to reproduce and prevent the crash from sideloading apk. All source code and apks are available at this link
After several investigations, we realized that the crash came from the android phone that installed the Tokopedia app from other app stores or shared apk (not from the Play Store). In this article, we will share how to reproduce and prevent the crash from sideloading apk. All source code and apks are available at this link
How to simulate the crash
From the sample project, we can see a splash screen with a green android icon. The icon resources are located in each separated screen density folder to make sure every density phone has a high-quality image.
To simulate the crash, we need to create an App Bundle first. App bundle can be generated from Android Studio build menu then generate the bundle
After we got the aab file, we can extract it to multiple apk based on its configuration with a bundletool. To extract the App Bundle, we can use the script below:
java -jar bundletool-all-0.9.0.jar build-apks — bundle=AppBundleWithoutCoreLib.aab — output=AppWithoutCoreLib.apks
After the App Bundle extraction, there will be two folders:
- Splits folder: contain many configuration apks that will be downloaded for android phone with OS Lollipop and above
- Standalones folder: For Android phone with OS pre-Lollipop, Playstore will generate apk with less configuration. This method is similar to split apk
If we install with base-master.apk from splits folder, the app will crash on the splash screen because the app could not found the resource icon in the installation. And we will get crash with stack trace Resources$NotFoundException
The Solution
In May 2019, Google updated its core library with a new API to prevent a crash from sideloading apk. The API is available from version 1.6.0 and above.
With a simple additional code in the application class, the app will display a popup if the app cannot find the required icon or other configuration.
As we can see, the app will display popup “installation failed” with options “close” to close the app and “reinstall” which will redirect and ask to reinstall the app on Google Play Store. With this library, we can prevent the crash from sideloading apk.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the App Bundle format able to reduce app download size, but we need to be aware of installation from shared apk and other app stores. We can also simulate the crash by installing the base apk after extract the app bundle using a bundletool. And to prevent the crash, we need to implement the latest play core library and add minimal code in application class.
