Why are (mobile) browsers so big?
Why are (mobile) browsers so big?
Why are so many mobile browsers at least 100, if not 200 megabytes in size? Even Firefox Focus which is supposed to be small and, you know, focussed is 85MB big.
The smallest browser I could find was the /e/ Foundation's built-in browser for /e/OS. It's 12MB.
It's kind of between Firefox and Focus in terms of features so why are all other browsers so big? Is there a small version of Firefox for Android?
Edit: I just looked up the /e/ Browser repo on their GitLab and the browser appears to be bigger than the 12MB displayed in App Info. It's about 70MB, so pretty comparable to the other browsers. I was so confused by the size difference but that's cleared up now.
Browsers are highly complex pieces of software. I had the opportunity to talk about browser engines with a hardware engineer for the chrome browser at GDC a year ago. Browser engines have to have more security than your operating system, while also interpreting DNS calls, rendering html/css, and interpreting JavaScript.
A basic html renderer would be small, like maybe a couple megabytes. But it would have absolutely no security. On the Internet.
103Web browsers are practically as complex as operating systems tbh
5Permanently Deleted
1
I am aware of the complexity of a modern browser. Still, 80+ megabytes for a simple browser like Focus seems excessive. Especially when the Bromite-based /e/OS browser can provide more functionality for an eighth of the size
3When it comes to software, complexity usually means one of 2 things: time complexity or space complexity. They have an inverse relationship, so if you want something fast you need more memory, and vice versa. In regards to browsers, that means either waiting forever to execute each op or using large amounts of storage/memory.
22
All complete browsers are big. The small ones typically don't have their own engine built-in.
iOS browsers all use Safari's WebKit as their engine, so they'll probably be smaller than their Android counterparts.
32So webkit is used as a system library? Not bundled in?
1No it’s worse than that. All iOS browsers need to use a Safari (WebKit) web view as far as I understand. So any browser on iOS is literally just barebones Safari with a different UI and possibly a different user agent.
In fact, until recently this was even worse as Safari on iOS enjoyed some accelerations/optimizations that the web views did not get to leverage; so for a while all iOS browsers were not only Safari, but they were slower Safari.
1
I don't think that /e/ even a "browser", more like "webview viewer"
19It does pretty much everything a browser like Firefox, Focus, Mull, etc would do so I think it's fair to call it a browser.Also, the Android System WebView package is not installed on /e/OSEdit: Yeah, never mind all that. The browser's size isn't shown correctly and some kind of WebView is installed so it may use that. The repo is about 70MB which makes far more sense.
0
100mb isn't that big these days, bud.
18But it should be.
Better technology and more storage should never excuse a lack of optimization.
I'm not up to speed on the optimization levels of mobile Web browsers, but these days you rarely see properly optimized consumer software. Games and websites tend to be the worst offenders, and many mobile apps appear 10x the size you would expect them to be.
26Imagine the utopia we would live in if every website was as beautiful as this https://perfectmotherfuckingwebsite.com/
4
Dude, you should see webpages... if it's built using react a website can easily clock in at half a gig.
16You’re not wrong but it feels disingenuous to say this. The entire repo with all of its dependencies checked out for a large website can easily clock at half a gig but there’s no popular website now that’s asking any users to download half a gig worth of stuff before they can use it.
There ARE websites where, if you keep them open long enough, they’ll constantly pull more and more data (usually for ads) but even that is measured more so in tens of megabytes.
And none of this is to say that websites haven’t gotten too big, just that comparing a downloaded app’s size to the size of a website’s unbuilt unbundled source with all of its dependencies is an unfair comparison.
11I think he was saying half a gig as in people ask you to build them a react site for about half of what you’d earn by bringing them a chipotle burrito as a dasher.
0
I am not sure you know what you are talking about. How is react the factor here of making it 500 MB?
2People like to hate on React these days… don’t read into it too much. As always, it’s the person wielding the tool, not the tool’s fault.
1
Browsers will grow with cache and settings etc.
I'm more curious about mobile apps in general. I had to install Microsoft Authenticator to log in to my work account and it costs 165 MB. It sucks because disk space is so limited
15There are many browsers that just use Chromium Webview and add their 2 cents. Some Chromium-based ones dont, like Brave, Cromite, etc, as they mod the webengine themselves.
Firefox basee Browsers all ship their engine included, as geckoview is not a webview poorly.
9Is there a small version of Firefox for Android?
There was Firefox Lite, but it was really Chromium under the hood (using Android's built-in WebView, to keep that download size small). It was discontinued in 2021.
84MB jquarks browser with built-in adblocker
7Try out Via, it weights less than a MB.
6Amazing, this looks like it's a lightweight wrapper around Android System Webview. It reminds me of the abandoned Naked Browser. I'll try it out.
Edit: My password manager says no password fields detected. Anyone else got Via working with a password manager?
4Thanks for the tip, I like the UI
3
Browsers are big. Some just loads webpage and renders with system webview so they don't bundle their own browser engine
2