The Gmail app, on the App Store, is currently 760.7 MB in size. It is in the top three most bloated apps out of the top 100 free apps. I don’t use it on my phone, but I was prompted to compare it with the seemingly hefty one I (have to) use, Outlook, while clearing up some storage space. Its measly 428 MB size pales in comparison.

This isn’t new. In 2017, Axios reported that the top iPhone apps had been taking up an increasing amount of space over the period from 2013 to 2017. For most of that period, the size of the Gmail app hovered around 12 MB, with a sudden jump to more than 200 MB near the start of 2017. Other popular apps also saw a 10x or more increase in size over the same period.

Gmail isn’t even the worst offender, it’s just a more popular one. The Tesla and Crypto.com apps are around 1 GB each. So is Samsung’s SmartThings app. What about Google’s other popular apps? Google Home is another hefty one, at 630 MB, that I used for its remote feature, which I replaced with Google TV at almost a tenth the size. Their other popular apps average around 250 MB in size. This seems tame in comparison to Microsoft, with an average app size of around 330MB. For reference, the average size of an app in the top 100 free apps is 280 MB or, in a more expanded set (including games), 200MB.

Just to put this into perspective, on my device, apps (excluding their data) use up 35 GB, and the data is another 35 GB. iOS takes up another 25 GB. Let’s say, 100 GB for apps, data and the OS. That leaves me with 20 GB (leaving a margin of free space for updates) meant to be used for capturing 4K video and high-quality photos (why else get an iPhone), and storing music (don’t even think about lossless). The reality is that running out of space also slows things down, since most of my photos need to be fetched from the cloud before viewing them, and I need to re-download these hefty offloaded apps when I need them again. And good luck if you have a limited data bundle.

Maybe this doesn’t matter. The latest iPhones start at 256 GB, and surely I’ll have plenty of space when I get a new one (although I remember saying this when I upgraded to 64 GB from 32 GB). It’s not really about the space though. These apps don’t have 50x or even 10x the functionality. But now they’re 100x larger, and probably slower. Why?

Also, can someone explain why Microsoft Authenticator is 150 MB to show 6-digit codes?

It’s not clear if this is specifically an iOS problem. I don’t have an Android device and I could not find a way to get that information from the Play Store without a device. That said, I checked the size of Gmail on someone’s Android phone, and it’s around 185 MB, which certainly seems much better.

And if you’re considering switching from the default apps, this is what the installed size (which differs slightly from the App Store size) is of the alternatives on my iPhone running iOS 26.2:

So, why is the Gmail app almost 80x the size of the native Mail app? My guess is as good as yours.