Android Disk Usage

The Disk Usage metric measures the amount of data (in MB) the app reads from the device’s disk and writes to the device’s disk during a session. It also shows the total disk reads and total disk writes by the app during the session.

In the app performance report, go to the Disk Usage section to view the amount of data the app read from and wrote to the disk in a session. In the graph, the axes represent the following:

• X-axis: Depicts the time (in seconds) elapsed since the start of the session. 0 on the X-axis represents the start of the profiling session.
• Y-axis: Depicts the amount of data read/written by the app in Kb at a particular time during a session since the session started.

Example

In the following example, the graph shows that the disk reads peaked at 5.904s. You can check what action caused this peak and decide whether it can be optimized.

To identify the actions or workflows that cause excessive disk usage, you can play the session video. Alongside the video, a bar moves on the graph to help you identify the actions or workflows of your interest. To view disk reads or disk writes individually, use the legends given on the graph.

Impact on user experience

Excessive disk write operations can negatively impact a user’s experience by slowing down the app’s performance and causing disk write exceptions. It is crucial to reduce disk writes to improve the app’s responsiveness and minimize wear on the device’s storage.

Threshold guidelines

Recommended thresholds are:

• Total Disk Reads is less than 100 MB in a session
• Total Disk Writes is less than 20 MB in a session

If your app exceeds these thresholds, App Performance Testing flags an issue in the performance report. To know more about the issue, see App performance issues - Disk Usage.

Recommendations

The following are the recommendations to improve Disk Usage:

• Use a lightweight database like SQLite for frequently changing data.
• Implement caching for frequently accessed files using libraries like LruCache or DiskLruCache.
• Use background processes for disk I/O operations to avoid impacting the user experience.
• Optimize file access through async I/O operations, sequential access of files, and avoiding unnecessary file access.
• Compress files such as images, videos, and audio using gzip to minimize file size.

Related topics

• View complete list of performance metrics for Android