Application size

[fr43nk]

I wonder, why this application is such a heavy download on macos. More than 350MB for an application that just syncs files between the cloud and my mac. Why is this? Are there any plans to reduce the size? Maybe as a native app?

Best regards

[Rello]

Hello,

its because of the transition of the different CPUs. currently its compiled for both platforms

[A1bi]

That's what I've been wondering lately. Uncompressed it even amounts to 900 MB, mostly comprised of over 50 different Qt frameworks. And as @Rello already said, they all contain the binaries for both x86 and arm.

[i2h3]

For reference, I wrote a blog post on this topic earlier this year which is available here:

https://i2h3.de/nextcloud-desktop-client-size/

About the plans: Yes, there are and we are close to delivery of major improvements in this regard. #10092 and #9886 will make a vast difference.

Because this issue is mostly raising questions und too vague while we have more focussed ones (already mentioned above) aiming for size reduction, I hereby close it. 🙂

Maybe as a native app?

Final note to clarify something for the record: our app is a native app on all platforms. The bloat comes from the dependencies, mainly QtWebEngine and QtMultimedia. On macOS in particular, the app is doubled in size by shipping universal binary which means native code for Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. In the distant future, when we can drop Intel support (macOS 26 Tahoe is the last macOS to support Intel) by raising our minimum deployment target to whatever comes this year, it will also slice our app size approximately in half.