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Kamaldeep Kakkar
Kamaldeep Kakkar

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👉 How to Reduce Android Build Time: Proven Tips for Faster Builds

#android #androiddev #kotlin #mobile

Slow Android builds are more than an inconvenience — they break your feedback loop and hurt developer productivity.
If your project takes several minutes to build after small changes, something is wrong.

After working on a medium-to-large Android codebase, I focused on fixing build-time bottlenecks instead of adding more hardware. The result: incremental builds dropped from ~10 minutes to 2–4 minutes.

Here’s what actually worked.

🧠 Why Android Builds Become Slow

Most slow builds come from:

  • Monolithic modules
  • Heavy annotation processing (KAPT)
  • Poor Gradle configuration
  • Too many exposed dependencies
  • Lack of incremental compilation

The fix isn’t a single flag—it’s a combination of optimizations.

1️⃣ Optimize Gradle Configuration (Start Here)

In gradle.properties:

org.gradle.daemon=true
org.gradle.parallel=true
org.gradle.caching=true
org.gradle.configureondemand=true
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Why this helps:

  1. Reuses the Gradle process
  2. Builds independent modules in parallel
  3. Skips tasks that haven’t changed
  4. Avoids configuring unused modules meaningfully

👉 This alone can reduce build time by 30–50%.

2️⃣ Enable Configuration Cache (Gradle 8+)

Gradle 8 introduced Configuration Cache, which stores the task graph from previous builds.

Instead of re-configuring everything on every build, Gradle reuses what it already knows.

Result: faster subsequent builds, especially during local development.

3️⃣ Replace KAPT with KSP

KAPT is slow because it:

  • Generates Java stubs
  • Breaks incremental compilation
  • Adds unnecessary overhead

KSP is:

  • Kotlin-native
  • Incremental
  • Much faster 
// Before
kapt("com.google.dagger:hilt-compiler")

// After
ksp("com.google.dagger:hilt-compiler")
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If you’re using Hilt, Room, or Moshi, this change alone can give a noticeable speed boost.

4️⃣ Modularize Your Project (Biggest Long-Term Win)

Monolithic projects force Gradle to recompile too much code.

Instead of:
app (everything)

Prefer:

:core
:domain
:data
:feature:login
:feature:home
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Benefits:

  • Faster incremental builds
  • Better parallel execution
  • Cleaner architecture
  • Easier ownership at scale
  • This is often the single biggest build-time improvement in large apps.

5️⃣ Prefer implementation Over api

Using api exposes dependencies to downstream modules and forces recompilation.

// Prefer this
implementation("com.squareup.retrofit2:retrofit")

// Avoid unless required
api("com.squareup.retrofit2:retrofit")
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Rule of thumb:
If a dependency is not part of the public contract, it should be implementation.

This improves:

  • Build performance
  • Encapsulation
  • Long-term maintainability

6️⃣ Disable Unused Android Build Features

Every enabled feature adds build work.

android {
    buildFeatures {
        viewBinding = true
        dataBinding = false
        aidl = false
        renderScript = false
        shaders = false
    }
}
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Only enable what you actually use.

7️⃣ Measure Before Optimizing

Don’t guess.

Use:

  1. Build Analyzer
  2. Gradle Build Scan (--scan)

Measure first, then optimize the real bottleneck.
Blind optimization often wastes time.

✅ Final Results

By combining these techniques:

  1. Clean Gradle setup
  2. KSP instead of KAPT
  3. Proper modularization
  4. Dependency hygiene

Incremental builds dropped from ~10 minutes to 2–4 minutes.

🧠 Key Takeaway

Reducing Android build time isn’t about one magic flag.
It’s about measuring, understanding the bottleneck, and applying the right optimizations.

If your builds are slow, your feedback loop is broken.

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