--- title: Shrinking a Kotlin binary by 99.2% | daily.dev description: Jake Wharton walks through shrinking a Kotlin JVM binary from ~1.62MiB to ~13KiB (99.2% reduction) for a dependency-tree-diff tool. The process involves:... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/shrinking-a-kotlin-binary-by-99-2--wkroq1dro twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Shrinking a Kotlin binary by 99.2% | daily.dev og:description: Jake Wharton walks through shrinking a Kotlin JVM binary from ~1.62MiB to ~13KiB (99.2% reduction) for a dependency-tree-diff tool. The process involves:... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/shrinking-a-kotlin-binary-by-99-2--wkroq1dro og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/WkROQ1dRo.png og:image:alt: Shrinking a Kotlin binary by 99.2% og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Shrinking a Kotlin binary by 99.2% **[Jake Wharton](https://daily.dev/sources/jakewharton)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Jake Wharton walks through shrinking a Kotlin JVM binary from ~1.62MiB to ~13KiB (99.2% reduction) for a dependency-tree-diff tool. The process involves: removing unused metadata files (.kotlin_module, .kotlin_metadata, maven files) for an 11% reduction, running R8 with ProGuard config to strip unused code for a 98% reduction, then manually replacing Kotlin stdlib file-reading and line-splitting APIs with Java NIO equivalents to eliminate transitive dependencies. The post also identifies remaining size contributors — Kotlin's multiplatform empty collection implementations and redundant null-check intrinsics — and recommends R8/ProGuard or GraalVM native image for anyone building JVM binaries. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Honey, I shrank the JARs - Mostly nerdless](https://daily.dev/posts/honey-i-shrank-the-jars---mostly-nerdless-ndnbulwiu) · Mostly Nerdless · 19 upvotes · 1 comments - [GraalVM CE 25.1.3 Gets Native Image "Hello World" Program Down To Just 6.5MB](https://daily.dev/posts/graalvm-ce-25-1-3-gets-native-image-hello-world-program-down-to-em-just-em-6-5mb-qnvqrhoox) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#kotlin](https://daily.dev/tags/kotlin), [#jvm](https://daily.dev/tags/jvm) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/shrinking-a-kotlin-binary-by-99-2--wkroq1dro) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Shrinking a Kotlin binary by 99.2%","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/shrinking-a-kotlin-binary-by-99-2--wkroq1dro","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/shrinking-a-kotlin-binary-by-99-2--wkroq1dro"},"datePublished":"2026-07-05T07:14:22.683Z","dateModified":"2026-07-05T07:18:06.300Z","description":"Jake Wharton walks through shrinking a Kotlin JVM binary from ~1.62MiB to ~13KiB (99.2% reduction) for a dependency-tree-diff tool. 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