Optimizing App Launch

These are notes I’ve taken while watching the video of the corresponding session. They don’t have all the information contained in the video, but I’ve tried to still write the main points for my personal use cases.

Cold Launch

• After reboot
• Not launched for a while

Warm Launch

• Recently Terminated
• App partially in memory

Resume

• App already in memory

Launch animation - 400ms

100ms for iOS to launch the app 300ms animation to setup the first screen

The screen doesn’t need to be complete, can have placeholders.

• DYLD3 Don’t link unused frameworks Hard link dependencies
• libSystem
• runtime Invokes static load methods. Avoid it, if you really need use initialize and not load
• UIKit System initializes UIApplication - UIApplicationDelegate - event processing Avoid work if you subclass UIApplication and in UIApplicationDelegate initializer
• UIApplication Lifecycle callbacks: willFinishLaunching didFinishLaunching applicationDidBecomeActive

With UIScene scene:willConnectToSession:option//initialize vc here and not in willFinishLaunching anymore sceneWillEnterForeground sceneDidBecomeActive

defeer not necessary work.

First frame: loadView viewDidLoad layoutSubview Flatten views and lazily load views not shown during launch Reduce number of autolayout constraints

Extended phase: UI should be interactive Use os_signpost to debug

To test: Consistent result by having a clean environment.

• Reboot device and let it rest for 3 min
• Enabled Airplane Mode or mock network
• Logout of iCloud
• Measure in Release Mode
• Measure with warm launches (more consistent)

Test with new and old devices Test with small and large amount of data in the app

Use XCTest to launch and test it repeatedly

• Minimize Work Only work related to showing the first frame Move blocking work off the main thread Reduce memory usage
• Prooritize Work Use right QOS Use scheduler
• Optimizing Work Limit existing work to only what you need during launch and use lazy vars Optimize data structure and algorithms Don’t do work twice

New App Launch template in Instruments

Blue->Working Red->Waiting Orange->Stopped due to higher priority task Gray->Waiting(nothing to do)

Rest of the talk is a great demo on how to debug problems using Instruments.

Use XCTest

measure(metrics:[XCTOSSignpostMetric.applicationLaunch]){ XCUIApplication(bundleIdentifier:”com.example.apple.StarSearcher”).launch() }//by default 5 launches

Track your Launch Over Time

• Easy to introduce regressions and small regressions stack up
• Plot it over time and have a target
• Xcode Organizer includes performance metrics including launch time
• Use MetricKit for custom metrics. Aggregated results delivered evbery 24hrs.

Measure, don’t estimate performance.

Source Optimizing App Launch