Hello everyone,
We recently noticed a sudden and unexplained increase in our app's download and install sizes on App Store Connect. The jump happened literally overnight between April 2 and April 3.
After auditing our commit history and running some isolation tests, it appears this increase is artificial and related to a change in App Store Connect's post-processing or size attribution logic, rather than our actual codebase.
The initial observation:
- Build A (April 2): Download: 174 MB | Install: 380 MB
- Build B (April 3): Download: 179 MB | Install: 386 MB
To figure out what caused the ~5 MB download and ~6 MB install jump, we looked at the diff between the two builds. We ran a local size analysis on the IPAs for both commits and the diff was just 18,287 bytes. Such a difference in the compiled binary absolutely does not account for a 5-6 MB jump in the final App Store Connect estimates.
To completely rule out our code, we took the exact source tree from Build A (which originally processed at 174 MB / 380 MB) and pushed a fresh upload to App Store Connect. Re-uploaded Build A increased in size to 179 MB / 386 MB.
Since re-uploading the exact same commit now results in the larger size estimates, it seems the discrepancy is not originating from our code.
Has anyone else experienced a similar bump in their app sizes recently? Could an Apple engineer provide any insight into what might be causing this?