Building and running app via Gradle and Android Studio is slower than via Eclipse

Question

I have a multi-project   10 modules  of which building takes about 20-30 seconds each time  When I press Run in Android Studio  I have to wait every time to rebuild the app  which is extremely slow   Is it possible to automate building process in Android Studio  Or do you have any advice on how to make this process faster   In Eclipse  thanks to automatic building  running the same project on an emulator takes about 3-5 seconds   This is my build gradle file  app module    buildscript       repositories           maven   url  http   repo1 maven org maven2              dependencies           classpath  com android tools build gradle 0 4          apply plugin   android   dependencies       compile fileTree dir   libs   include     jar       compile project   libraries SharedLibs       compile project   libraries actionbarsherlock       compile project   libraries FacebookSDK       compile project   libraries GooglePlayServices       compile project   libraries HorizontalGridView       compile project   libraries ImageViewTouch       compile project   libraries SlidingMenu      android       compileSdkVersion 17     buildToolsVersion  17 0 0       defaultConfig           minSdkVersion 8         targetSdkVersion 16

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I was fed up with the slow build of android on my local machine. The way I solved this was spinning up a high-end machine on AWS and rsyncing the code from my local to the machine and compiling it over there.

I saw an immediate increase in the performance and my local system was saved from CPU hog. Check out this tool I created to help the developers speed up their terminal https://stormyapp.com

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Speed Up Gradle Build In Android Studio 3 2 1  Ever feel like you are waiting for the builds to complete in Android Studio for minutes  Me too  And it   s a pretty annoying  Fortunately  there are a few ways that you can use to improve this  Android uses Gradle for building  The latest version is 4 6 has a huge performance boost over previous versions  see Release notes for details    Step 1  Update Gradle version An easier way to accomplish this is to go to  Open Module Settings  your project    Project Structure    UPDATE  Change to Gradle version  4 6 and Change to Android Plugin Version  3 2 1    Download Gradle Release distributive from https   services gradle org distributions gradle-4 6-all zip And copy it to the Gradle folder     Last step is to add your discribution in Settings   Gradle    Don   t forget to click Apply to save changes   Step 2  Enable Offline mode  Gradle daemon and parallel build for the project Offline mode tells Gradle to ignore update-to-date checks  Gradle asks for dependencies everytime and having this option makes it just uses what is already on the machine for dependencies  Go to Gradle from android studio Setting and click in Offline work box      Go to Compiler from android studio Setting and add        offline    in command-line box and click Compile independent modules in parallel      The next step is to enable the Gradle daemon and parallel build for your project  Parallel builds will cause your projects with multiple modules  multi-project builds in Gradle  to be built in parallel  which should make large or modular projects build faster     These settings could enabled by modifiing a file named gradle properties in Gradle scripts directory i e      gradle gradle properties  Some of these options  e g  Complie modules in parallel  are available from Android Studio and also enabled there by default  but putting them in the gradle properties file will enabled them when building from the terminal and also making sure that your colleagues will use the same settings  But if you   re working on a team  sometimes you can   t commit this stuff     When configured  Gradle will run in incubating parallel mode    This option should only be used with decoupled projects  More details  visit org gradle parallel true   When set to true the Gradle daemon is used to run the build  For local developer builds this is our favorite property    The developer environment is optimized for speed and feedback so we nearly always run Gradle jobs with the daemon   org gradle daemon true   Using the daemon will make your builds startup faster as it won   t have to start up the entire Gradle application every time  The Gradle Daemon is not enabled by default  but it   s recommend always enabling it for developers    machines  but leaving it disabled for continuous integration servers   FAQ about this mode could be found here https   docs gradle org current userguide gradle daemon html  The parallel builds setting could be unsafe for some projects  The requirement is that all your modules must be decoupled or your build could fail  see http   gradle org docs current userguide multi project builds html sec decoupled projects for details    Step 3  Enable incremental dexign and tweak memory settings You can speed up your builds by turning on incremental dexing  In your module   s build file     Add this option to your android block   dexOptions       incremental true     In that dexOptions block you can also specify the heap size for the dex process  for example   dexOptions       incremental true     javaMaxHeapSize  12g      Where    12g    is 12GB of memory  Additional information about this could be found here google github io android-gradle-dsl current  You can also configure Gradle parameters in the settings file  e g  increase the max heap size in case you have a large project     Specifies the JVM arguments used for the daemon process    The setting is particularly useful for tweaking memory settings    Default value  -Xmx10248m -XX MaxPermSize 256m org gradle jvmargs -Xmx2048m -XX MaxPermSize 512m -XX  HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Dfile encoding UTF-8   See all list of parameters here  https   docs gradle org current userguide userguide single html sec gradle configuration properties for details   Step 4  Disable Antivirus Consider to exclude project and cache files from antivirus scanning  This is obviously a trade off with security  But if you switch between branches a lot  then antivirus will rescan files before allowing gradle process to use it  which slows build time  in particular Android Studio sync project with gradle files and indexing tasks   Measure build time and process CPU with and without antivirus enabled to see if it is related  I hope this helps  Leave a comment if you have any question or some other tips for improving the build performance   helpful link

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Hardware  I m sorry  but upgrading development station to SSD and tons of ram has probably a bigger influence than points below combined    Tools versions  Increasing build performance has major priority for the development teams  so make sure you are using latest Gradle and Android Gradle Plugin   Configuration File  Create a file named gradle properties in whatever directory applies     home  lt username gt   gradle   Linux   Users  lt username gt   gradle   Mac  C  Users  lt username gt   gradle  Windows    Append       IDE  e g  Android Studio  users    Settings specified in this file will override any Gradle settings   configured through the IDE     For more details on how to configure your build environment visit   http   www gradle org docs current userguide build environment html    The Gradle daemon aims to improve the startup and execution time of Gradle    When set to true the Gradle daemon is to run the build    TODO  disable daemon on CI  since builds should be clean and reliable on servers org gradle daemon true    Specifies the JVM arguments used for the daemon process    The setting is particularly useful for tweaking memory settings    https   medium com google-developers faster-android-studio-builds-with-dex-in-process-5988ed8aa37e  krd1mm27v org gradle jvmargs -Xmx5120m -XX MaxPermSize 512m -XX  HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Dfile encoding UTF-8    When configured  Gradle will run in incubating parallel mode    This option should only be used with decoupled projects  More details  visit   http   www gradle org docs current userguide multi project builds html sec decoupled projects org gradle parallel true    Enables new incubating mode that makes Gradle selective when configuring projects     Only relevant projects are configured which results in faster builds for large multi-projects    http   www gradle org docs current userguide multi project builds html sec configuration on demand org gradle configureondemand true    Set to true or false to enable or disable the build cache     If this parameter is not set  the build cache is disabled by default    http   tools android com tech-docs build-cache android enableBuildCache true   Gradle properties works local if you place them at projectRoot gradle properties and globally if you place them at user home  gradle gradle properties  Properties applied if you run gradle tasks from console or directly from idea   IDE Settings  It is possible to tweak Gradle-IntelliJ integration from the IDE settings GUI  Enabling  offline work   check answer from yava below  will disable real network requests on every  sync gradle file      Native multi-dex  One of the slowest steps of the apk build is converting java bytecode into single dex file  Enabling native multidex  minSdk 21 for debug builds only  will help the tooling to reduce an amount of work  check answer from Aksel Willgert below    Dependencies  Prefer  aar dependencies over library sub-projects    Search aar package on mavenCentral  jCenter or use jitpack io to build any library from github  If you are not editing sources of the dependency library you should not build it every time with your project sources    Antivirus  Consider to exclude project and cache files from antivirus scanning  This is obviously a trade off with security  don t try this at home    But if you switch between branches a lot  then antivirus will rescan files before allowing gradle process to use it  which slows build time  in particular AndroidStudio sync project with gradle files and indexing tasks   Measure build time and process CPU with and without antivirus enabled to see if it is related    Profiling a build  Gradle has built-in support for profiling projects  Different projects are using a different combination of plugins and custom scripts  Using --profile will help to find bottlenecks

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Searched everywhere for this and finally found a solution that works for us  Enabling parallel builds  On OSX  preferences - gt  compiler - gt  gradle - gt   Compile independent modules in parallel   and enabling  make project automatically  brought it down from  1 min to  20 sec  Thanks to  u Covalence   http   www reddit com r androiddev comments 1k3nb3 gradle and android studio way slower to build

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I m far from being an expert on Gradle but my environment had the following line in  gradle init gradle   gradle projectsLoaded       rootProject allprojects           repositories               mavenRepo name   libs-repo   url   http   guest-vm artifactory repo                      Yet I have no idea why that line was there  but I try changing to    gradle projectsLoaded       rootProject allprojects           repositories               mavenCentral                        and now I finally can work without swearing to Android Studio  amp  Gradle buildind scheme

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You could make the process faster  if you use gradle from command line  There is a lot of optimization to do for the IDE developers  But it is just an early version   For more information read this discussion on g  with some of the devs

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This setup goes really fast for me   about 2 seconds the build   build gradle  android        dexOptions           incremental true         preDexLibraries   false         jumboMode   false         maxProcessCount 4         javaMaxHeapSize  6g            gradle properties  org gradle daemon true org gradle parallel true org gradle jvmargs -Xmx8192M   my PC    CPU  Intel R  Pentium R  CPU G2030   3 00GHz  3000 Mhz  2 procesadores principales  2 procesadores l  gicos  x64  Microsoft Windows 7 Professional   RAM  16 0 GB   project files  - All located in local HD

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Just create a file named gradle properties in the following directory    home  lt username gt   gradle   Linux   Users  lt username gt   gradle   Mac  C  Users  lt username gt   gradle  Windows    Add this line to the file   org gradle daemon true   For me the speed is now equal to Eclipse   Source  https   www timroes de 2013 09 12 speed-up-gradle

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To run Android envirorment on low configuration machine    Close the uncessesory web tabs in browser For Antivirus users  exclude the build folder which is auto generated  Android studio have 1 2 Gb default heap can decrease to 512 MB Help   Edit custom VM options studio vmoptions -Xmx512m Layouts performace will be speed up For Gradle one of the core component in Android studio Mkae sure like right now 3 0beta is latest one   Below tips can affect the code quality so please use with cautions    Studio contain Power safe Mode when turned on it will close background operations that lint   code complelitions and so on  You can run manually lintcheck when needed   gradlew lint Most of are using Android emulators on average it consume 2 GB RAM so if possible use actual Android device these will reduce your resource load on your computer  Alternatively you can reduce the RAM of the emulator and it will automatically reduce the virtual memory consumption on your computer  you can find this in virtual device configuration and advance setting  Gradle offline mode is a feature for bandwidth limited users to disable the downloading of build dependencies  It will reduce the background operation that will help to increase the performance of Android studio  Android studio offers an optimization to compile multiple modules in parallel  On low RAM machines this feature will likely have a negative impact on the performance  You can disable it in the compiler settings dialog

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Just try this first  It is my personal experience    I had the same problem  What i had done is just permanently disable the antivirus  Mine was Avast Security 2015   Just after  disabling the antivirus   thing gone well    the gradle  finished successfully   From now within seconds the gradle is finishing   Only taking 5-10 secs

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A trivial change  to a resoruce xml  still took 10 minutes  As  rivare says in his answer  a command line build is mutch faster  took this down to 15 seconds   Here are some steps to at least make a trivial build fast from the command line for Windows    Go to your projects root  where the gradlew bat is    cd c  android MaskActivity execute the build   gradlew assembleDebug uninstall the apk from the phone directly  drag it to uninstall   When the build is finished  kill the BIG java process using Windows Task Manager    OR if you have unix tools on your Windows machine   ps    pid   s are shown   kill -9  lt pid gt     Now install your apk   adb -d install C  Android MaskActivity app build outputs apk app-debug apk

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If anyone is working a project which is synced via Subversion and this still happening  I think this can slow the process of workflow in Android Studio  For example if it work very slow while  scrolling in a class xml etc  while my app is still running on my device    Go to Version Control at Preferences  and set from Subversion to None

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Just another performance imporvement tip   Android Studio 3 0 includes new DEX compiler called D8     The dex compiler mostly works under the hood in your day-to-day app development  but it directly impacts your app s build time   dex file size  and runtime performance      And when comparing the new D8 compiler with the current DX compiler  D8 compiles faster and outputs smaller  dex files  while having the same or better app runtime performance    D8 is optional - do use it we have to put to project s gradle properties  android enableD8 true   More informations  https   android-developers googleblog com 2017 08 next-generation-dex-compiler-now-in html  PS  It impove my build time by about 30

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Please follow the following steps    Enable offline mode    Please check below print screen   https   i stack imgur com RF9uG png Enable Instant Run   Please check below print screen   https   i stack imgur com mvHKJ png  If you want to learn more about instant run please visit android developer site

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Hi I know this is very very late answer but maybe help someone in my case I was using         compile  com android support support-v4 23 1 1    in my app Gradle dependency but in one of my libraries it was          compile  com android support support-v4 23 0 1    after change all to latest version my problem solved

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You could try opening the gradle menu on the right side of studio  and assemble only the modules you have changed  then run the install command  When you press run it assembles everything regardless of any changes you you may have made to the code it is assembling

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Update After Android Studio 2 3  All answers are great  and I encourage to use those methods with this one to improve build speed   After release of android 2 2 on September 2016  Android released experimental build cache feature to speed up gradle build performance  which is now official from Android Studio 2 3 Canary   Official Release note    It introduces a new build cache feature  which is enable by default  can speed up build times  including full builds  incremental builds  and instant run  by storing and reusing files directories that were created in previous builds of the same or different Android project    How to use   Add following line in your gradle properties file  android enableBuildCache   true   Set to true or false to enable or disable the build cache  If this parameter is not set  the build cache is enable by default    Clean the cache     There is a new Gradle task called cleanBuildCache for you to more easily clean the build cache  You can use it by typing the following in your terminal      gradlew cleanBuildCache OR You can clean the cache for Android studio 2 2 by deleting all the files store at location  C  Users  lt username gt   android build-cache

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Solved mine with      File - gt  Settings - gt  Build  Execution  Deployment - gt  Build Tools - gt    Gradle - gt  Offline work   Gradle builds went from 8 minutes to 3 seconds

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After change this settings my compile duration 10 minutes changed to  10 secs   Step 1      Settings ctrl Alt S  -        Build Execution Deployment -        Compiler -        type  --offline  in command-line Options box    Step 2       check the    Compile independent modules in parallel    checkbox        amp  click Apply -  OK     Reference - https   www sundoginteractive com blog speed-up-gradle-in-android-studio  Disadvantage   You will not be able to pull down the latest versions of the dependencies identified in your build gradle file  It runs faster because it uses a cached snapshot of those imported libraries   Important Note  When you deploy the application remove this settings  amp  build with latest versions of dependencies

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Here s what helped this beginning Android programmer  former professional programmer  years ago  in speeding up Android Studio 2 2  I know this is a rehash  but  just summarizing in one place    Initial builds can still be brutally slow  but restarts of running apps are now usually very tolerable  I m using a sub-optimal PC  AMD Quad-Core A8-7410 CPU  8MB RAM  non-SSD HD  Win 10   And  this is my first Stack Overflow posting         IN SETTINGS -  GRADLE   yes for  Offline work    this is perhaps the most import setting    IN SETTINGS -  COMPILER   yes for  Compile independent modules in parallel    not sure if this does in fact help utilize multicore CPUs    IN GRADLE SCRIPTS   build gradle  Module  app     defaultConfig                 keep min high so that restarted apps can be hotswapped   obviously  this is hugely faster     minSdkVersion 14               enabling multidex support   does make big difference for me      multiDexEnabled true   ALSO IN GRADLE SCRIPTS   gradle properties  Project Properties     org gradle jvmargs -Xmx3048m -XX MaxPermSize 512m -XX  HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Dfile encoding UTF-8  org gradle parallel true org gradle daemon true  Additionally  testing on a physical device instead of the emulator is working well for me  a small tablet that stands up is convenient

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If using google play services  depending on just the libraries you need instead of the whole blob can make things faster   If your only need is maps  use   compile  com google android gms play-services-maps 6 5      instead of   compile  com google android gms play-services 6 5      The latter brings 20k methods  see blog  into the classpath  which might tip the total method count over 64k    That would force the use of proguard or multidex even for debug builds  For one of my projects i had the following build times   multidex build  with supportlibrary   40sec proguard build  20sec build when method limit  lt  64k  5sec   If developing on sdk 21   it would possible to optimize multidex builds as stated in the android documentation  android       productFlavors              Define separate dev and prod product flavors          dev                  dev utilizes minSDKVersion   21 to allow the Android gradle plugin                to pre-dex each module and produce an APK that can be tested on                Android Lollipop without time consuming dex merging processes              minSdkVersion 21                   prod                  The actual minSdkVersion for the application              minSdkVersion 14

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USE this sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libncurses5 i386 libstdc  6 i386 zlib1g i386  Android Studio fails to build new project  timed out while wating for slave aapt process

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According to the android documentation  add this in the gradle file of app module   android               dexOptions       preDexLibraries true     maxProcessCount 8

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Following the steps will make it 10 times faster and reduce build time 90   First create a file named gradle properties in the following directory    home  lt username gt   gradle   Linux   Users  lt username gt   gradle   Mac  C  Users  lt username gt   gradle  Windows    Add this line to the file   org gradle daemon true org gradle parallel true   And check this options in Android Studio

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The accepted answer is for older versions of android studio and most of them works still now  Updating android studio made it a little bit faster  Don t bother to specify heap size as it ll increase automatically with the increase of Xms and Xmx  Here s some modification with the VMoptions   In bin folder there s a studio vmoptions file to set the environment configuration  In my case this is studio64 vmoptions Add the following lines if they re not added already and save the file  In my case I ve 8GB RAM   -Xms4096m -Xmx4096m -XX MaxPermSize 2048m -XX  CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX  CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled  -XX  HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Dfile encoding utf-8   Start android studio  Go to File-  Settings-  Build  Execution  Deployment-  Compiler   Check compile independent modules in parallel In command-line Options write  --offline Check Make project automatically Check configure on demand    In case of using mac  at first I couldn t find the vmoptions  Anyway  here s a nice article about how we can change the vmoptions in MAC OSX  Quoting from this article here   Open your terminal and put this command to open the vmoptions in MAC OSX   open -e  Applications Android  Studio app Contents bin studio vmoptions

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You can ignore gradle update-to-date checks     For Windows running Android Studio 1 5  Go to File - gt  Settings - gt  Build  Execution  Deployment - gt  Build tools - gt  Gradle - gt  Check Offline work  as shown in image   down from  30  sec to  3 sec

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I recently bought a new SSD and went from Windows to Linux My build times are now an order of magnitude faster  and no longer annoying    Though it does not directly answer your question as to why it s slower than eclipse  it shows that the process is disk-bounded and an upgrade to an SSD might be a  somewhat expensive  solution  I m guessing there will be people googling the issue and ending up here  who might appreciate my experience

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In our specific case  the problem was due to having the retrolambda plugin  which forced all projects and subprojects to recompile everytime we tried to launch our application  even if no code had been altered in our core modules   Removing retrolamba fixed it for us  Hope it helps someone

[android] Building and running app via Gradle and Android Studio is slower than via Eclipse

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