Tinder cuts app cold starts by 47% with new R8 Configuration Analyzer

Posted by Ajesh R Pai, Developer Relations Engineer, Ulises Uriel Verduzco Diaz, Software Engineer, Tinder, and Tracy Agyemang, Product Marketing ManagerTinder is on a mission to power and inspire real connections by making meeting easy and fun for every new generation of singles. However, as their Android application codebase grew in size, so did its complexity. Prior to their latest optimization efforts, approximately 70% of the application was not optimized, carrying 17 dex files,including three dedicated just to startup. Although they had enabled R8, much of its optimization potential was blocked due to keep rules, and the team was unable to identify which specific rules were preventing optimization. To reduce startup time and decrease user-perceived Application Not Responding (ANR) errors, Tinder turned to the new R8 Configuration Analyzer to tackle these challenges. By utilizing the R8 Configuration Analyzer, Tinder successfully identified and removed unintentional optimization blockers. The results were immediate and impactful: Tinder achieved a 47% reduction in app cold starts, shrank their app download size by 28.98% (down to 61.5 MB), and reduced user-perceived ANRs by 28%. Configuration analyzer The R8 Configuration Analyzer shows R8 optimization by tracking shrinking, optimization, and obfuscation scores to show available refinement areas. It shows the broad, redundant, or obsolete keep rules, including those from external libraries so that you can analyse the keep rule impact and refine the keep rules. Key metrics shown in Configuration Analyzer include: Shrinking Score: Code percentage available for R8 shrinking. Optimization Score: Code percentage open to optimization (for example, method inlining, horizontal class merging). Obfuscation Score: Percentage...

Original source: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/08/tinder-app-cold-start-r8-configuration-analyzer.html
Publisher: Android Developers Blog