Clear 2.2.2 is now available on the App Store with some performance enhancements for older devices and a huge reduction in install and download size.
Sizes differ per device (Apple generates a separate build you download based on your device, even different iPhone generations) but we’re looking at something like an 85% improvement:
For those of you curious: The app size bloat issue was about 80% due to the tons of app icons Clear includes, and Apple requires to bundle in the app vs. say, downloading the ones you use on demand. The other 20% were onboarding graphics and movies.
The problem was there isn’t much room to maneuver with the icons, Apple has very specific requirements there.
The one big trick that turned out huge for us was downscaling the 1024 * 1024 resolution PNGs Apple requires for each icon, to 180 * 180… and then scaling it up to fit their canvas size. As far as we can tell, the custom icons are not displayed on iOS at larger sizes than that, so it shouldn’t be very noticeable in the end. Please report if you notice them being displayed larger in some situations or something like that!
Anyways for more detailed icons this brought down their sizes sometimes by well over 20x.
Long story short, I think we can have our icons cake and eat it too without balloooning in size moving forward
There is a visual and technical bug with the “Wallet” icon, it displays it as a “Hand Bag” icon, and if you click and set the “Wallet” icon, it is set as the “Hand Bag” icon. That’s what caught my eye.
Good catch we’ll fix this in 2.2.3. (And good to know your eye didn’t notice a quality regression, I didn’t either but was curious if sharper eyes would notice something.)
Hmm, should be the same size so we can check. I honestly can’t really tell comparing the two there myself but I have slightly blurry eyesight so I believe you!
The icons look exactly the same to me and I like to think I have pretty good eyesight. The only place I feel like there’s any difference is on the rounded edge of the checkmarks in the pop-up when you change an icon, it’s maybe slightly less crisp of a curve, but I also have to look at it really closely and I’m still not certain it’s worse than before. But if it is, it’s very minor and not something I would have ever noticed if I wasn’t trying to look at it.
I’d absolutely take this tradeoff for the huge reduction in app size which is great to see!
@Odin Yes, I agree with you. It’s all nothing compared to the fact that the application has begun to weigh less. Although it wasn’t a problem for me, I know that many people talked about it. (Pretiously old device and lack of memory) this is a useful update. Then I’ll think that maybe it seemed to me, since no one else noticed it.
Interesting, I could see that with the icons. That bug felt kind of like it was running into some memory constraint. If it’s something like that, the issue could still be around, but maybe it will only trigger if you change icons 10x as many times as you did before. (With just Clear.)
Where are you noticing the increased snappiness out of curiosity? And I presume you have a lot of lists, or very long ones? (Including checked off items.)
@Odin@alx_ras good to hear there. The icon confirmation popup seems like a temporary enough case to not worry too much about.
If there are specific icons that suffer more than others with the compression, we could probably set aside a small group to output at higher res too later on.
I tried but the bug hasn’t resurfaced. We’ll see after a couple of reboots.
Nah, I’m a notorious spring cleaner! It’s when I open Clear after quitting it, intentionally or otherwise. The speed improvement is in milliseconds but it is noticeable enough for me.
