Android Backstage, a podcast by and for Android developers. Hosted by developers from the Android engineering team, this show covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google. Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs

What's so great about R8?

February 18, 2026 01:06:30 63.83 MB Downloads: 0

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"