How to build for android (rewriting new project)

[danielcr12]

Hi Skip team 👋

I’m currently developing an app with Skip and testing across both iOS and Android. On iOS (iPad), the app performs beautifully—even in debug builds—with high frame rates and smooth animations that feel very native.

However, when testing the Android version (debug build), the experience is quite different. I’m seeing:
• Noticeable frame rate limitations (appears stuck at 60fps or possibly less)
• Visual artifacts and choppy transitions
• Sluggish UI responsiveness overall

I understand this may be due to running the app in debug mode without full optimizations. I’d really like to test the Android build using release flags to get a true sense of the app’s performance on real devices.

Can you help me with:
• How to properly build the Android app in release mode using Skip?
• Whether I need signing configurations for internal-only testing (no Play Store yet)?
• If there’s a way to unlock higher frame rates on Android, like how iOS seems to automatically respect the device’s refresh rate (e.g. 120Hz)?
• Any Skip-specific configuration I should consider for better animation performance or frame scheduling on Android?

Thanks in advance—I really appreciate all the work behind Skip. I’m loving the workflow on iOS and would love to get Android up to that same performance level.

[marcprux]

Thanks for reaching out. Probably the easiest first thing to try is installing the Skip Showcase app on your Android device from the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.appfair.app.Showcase and see how well the app performs on your device. If you have an older or slower device, you might encounter similar performance issues¹.

Running your app in Release mode is indeed a good idea. You can do this by running gradle -p Android launchRelease from the root of your project. But you will likely need a valid signing key for release mode. You can read about how to generate one at https://skip.tools/docs/deployment/#export-signing.

If you are still seeing performance issues, a common cause is excessive recompositions, or performing heavy calculations within a View body. This sort of issue can affect both iOS and Android, but it often affects Android disproportionally. You can run your app in Android Studio and follow the performance analysis guide: https://developer.android.com/codelabs/jetpack-compose-performance#3

Hopefully this is enough to get you started. We would love to hear the results of your investigation on this thread, and we can follow-up with additional suggestions if you get stuck.

Footnotes

1. For the record, it is as fast on my Pixel 6 as on my iPhone 13. ↩

[danielcr12]

The performance issue seems to appear right from the beginning—specifically when creating a new project using the template. The app feels a bit choppy during this process. I’m using an Oppo Find X8 Pro, so I would expect much smoother performance given the device’s capabilities.

the app from the play store you referenced works smoothly.

Additionally, I’ve already created a signing key, but when I try to build the app for release, I encounter the following error in the command line.

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im attaching a video, when using .frame(infinity) i algo see some artifacts
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOKJKA0vTD4wuKYK7_WVbMkfywLcTaIyxcdzIHVqIc1nkTTmllqMBKkz_Cv9yqOxg?pli=1&key=bmN6X0RqZEw2bzgzQURvWG5xZUVWOW5sMkFpRnZ3

⸻

danielcarrero@Daniels-MacBook-Air petcare-skip % gradle -p Android launchRelease
running pre-build command: swift build --triple arm64-apple-ios --sdk /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS18.4.sdk --package-path /Users/danielcarrero/petcare-skip
[0/1] Planning build
[1/1] Compiling plugin Create SkipLink
[2/2] Compiling plugin skipstone
Building for debugging...
[2/4] Write swift-version--58304C5D6DBC2206.txt
Build complete! (0.54s)
Kotlin does not yet support 23 JDK target, falling back to Kotlin JVM_22 JVM target

Task :skip-plugins:compileKotlin UP-TO-DATE
Kotlin does not yet support 23 JDK target, falling back to Kotlin JVM_22 JVM target

[Incubating] Problems report is available at: file:///Users/danielcarrero/petcare-skip/.build/Android/pet.care.skip/reports/problems/problems-report.html

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

• What went wrong:
  Could not determine the dependencies of task ':app:launchRelease'.

Task with path 'installRelease' not found in project ':app'.

• Try:

Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace.
Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.
Run with --scan to get full insights.
Get more help at https://help.gradle.org.

Deprecated Gradle features were used in this build, making it incompatible with Gradle 9.0.

You can use '--warning-mode all' to show the individual deprecation warnings and determine if they come from your own scripts or plugins.

For more on this, please refer to https://docs.gradle.org/8.13/userguide/command_line_interface.html#sec:command_line_warnings in the Gradle documentation.

BUILD FAILED in 2s
4 actionable tasks: 4 up-to-date

[marcprux]

the app from the play store you referenced works smoothly.

That's a good sign: it shows that there's no inherent performance issues with Skip apps on your device.

Could not determine the dependencies of task ':app:launchRelease'.

That's odd. Does gradle -p Android launchDebug work for you?

[danielcr12]

I think the issue happens when I run the app directly from Xcode targeting my iPad and Android device. The app installs and runs on both, and everything works great on the iPad. On Android, things generally work, but I notice some performance issues.

Interestingly, when I install the app from the Play Store, it performs almost like a native app. However, when I install it from my development environment, those performance issues show up again. Also, I’m not able to run the app from Xcode if I switch the build configuration from Debug to Release—it just won’t run.

I get similar results when I do the lunch debug from the command line, running from with an xcode seems to work