DiscoverAndroid Developers BackstageWhat's so great about R8?
What's so great about R8?

What's so great about R8?

Update: 2026-02-18
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Join hosts Tor and Romain as they sit down with Søren Gjesse, Chris Craik, and Shai Barack.

This week, the team dives into R8, the whole-program optimizer that handles the "last mile" of your code before it runs on a device. Learn why implementing R8 is effectively like giving your users a "free hardware upgrade" by making their current devices perform like models that are years newer.

Enable app optimization → https://goo.gle/R8-Optimizer


Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:23 - What is R8?
1:16 - R8 vs D8
1:40 - Tree Shaking & Dead Code
4:14 - Handling Reflection
10:10 - Performance Co-Optimization
13:03 - Kotlin-Specific Gains
16:22 - Real-World Impact
41:50 - Jetpack Compose & R8
50:51 - Keep annotations
1:03:49 - The "Free Hardware Upgrade"

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What's so great about R8?

What's so great about R8?

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