What is AAB? Difference between AAB and APK

Android app bundle was launched back in May 2018. According to Google, more than a million apps on Google Play Store are using the Android App bundle for their apps. They also told us that the majority of Top 1000 apps are using the Android app bundle. These apps include some popular and well-known brands like Twitter, Netflix, Adobe, Gameloft, Duolingo, redBus, and more.

Dom Elliott, Product Manager at Google Play made a big announcement in a blog post. He announced that Google made it mandatory for developers to add an Android app bundle to be published on Google Play Store. He clarified that Google Play replaced the APK with AAB as the standard format of apps.

Now, if you’re someone who doesn’t know What is AAB and the difference between AAB and APK. Don’t worry, I will be explaining to you everything about AAB and the difference between AAB and APK.

What is Android App Bundle (AAB)?

Android App Bundle or AAB is a publishing format that allows you to build and release your Android apps efficiently. It reduces the size of apps and makes people keep them installed as it saves storage on Android devices. It allows Google Play to serve apps based on device requirements rather than just delivering all of the code and packages.

Google released Android App Bundle in May 2018. But, from August 2021, they made it mandatory for developers to release their apps in Android App Bundle or AAB format.

For a long time, developers have used the APK (short for Android Packages) format to package program codes, assets, and other components. However, beginning in August 2021, Android app developers will be required to adopt Google’s Android App Bundles (AAB) packaging standard for new apps.

What is the difference between AAB and APK?

Now, we know the meaning of the AAB or Android App Bundle. Let’s understand the major difference between AAB and APK format.

App bundles are a publishing format, whereas APK (Android application package) is the packaging type that will ultimately be loaded on the device. Google app bundle generates and serves optimized APKs for each user’s device settings, ensuring that they only download the code and resources required to execute your program. As a result, consumers can benefit from lower, more efficient downloads.

App Bundles are a publishing format, whereas the APK (Android application PacKage) is the final packaging file that will be loaded into the device. App Bundles build a group of APKs with bundletool. (.apks) This may be extracted and the base and configuration portions, as well as any potential dynamic feature modules, deployed to a device.

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