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26 changes: 22 additions & 4 deletions src/content/docs/code-push/faq.mdx
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -331,10 +331,28 @@ your system should you choose.

### How big of a dependency footprint does this add?

We expect the code push library to add less than one megabyte to Flutter apps.
`flutter build apk --release` vs. `shorebird build apk --release` should give
you a rough idea but keep in mind that many store distributions do also
automatically thin your app for the device that it is being installed on.
Shorebird ships its own build of the Flutter engine with the patching runtime
included, which is where the overhead comes from. The table below compares
Shorebird's engine against stock Flutter for the same engine version, measured
on the stripped binaries that actually ship to users:

| Platform | Shorebird (on-disk / download) | Flutter (on-disk / download) | Shorebird overhead |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------ | ---------------------------- | ------------------- |
| iOS (arm64) | 13.25 MB / 5.68 MB | 8.58 MB / 3.67 MB | +4.67 MB / +2.01 MB |
| Android (arm64-v8a) | 13.38 MB / 6.40 MB | 10.79 MB / 5.06 MB | +2.58 MB / +1.35 MB |

"On-disk" is the uncompressed size installed on the device. "Download" is the
approximate size shipped over the store — APKs and IPAs use DEFLATE compression,
which `gzip -9` closely mimics, so the gzipped size is a good proxy for what a
user's device actually pulls down.

These numbers are for Flutter 3.41.7 (April 2026). Earlier Shorebird engines
were meaningfully larger — iOS overhead alone came down by roughly 2 MB on-disk
in the preceding month — and we continue to shrink the overhead; progress is
tracked in
[shorebird#3715](https://github.com/shorebirdtech/shorebird/issues/3715). You
can reproduce a rough measurement on your own app by comparing the output of
`flutter build apk --release` against `shorebird build apk --release`.

### When do updates happen?

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