Android Studio gradle takes too long to build

Question

My Android Studio project used to build faster but now it takes a long time to build. Any ideas what could be causing the delays? I have tried https://stackoverflow.com/a/27171878/391401 but no effect. I dont have any Anti virus running which could interrupt the builds. My app is not that big in size as well (around 5MB) and it used to build within few seconds but not sure what has changed.

10:03:51 Gradle build finished in 4 min 0 sec  
10:04:03 Session 'app': running  
10:10:11 Gradle build finished in 3 min 29 sec  
10:10:12 Session 'app': running  
10:20:24 Gradle build finished in 3 min 42 sec  
10:28:18 Gradle build finished in 3 min 40 sec  
10:28:19 Session 'app': running  
10:31:14 Gradle build finished in 2 min 56 sec   
10:31:14 Session 'app': running  
10:38:37 Gradle build finished in 3 min 30 sec  
10:42:17 Gradle build finished in 3 min 40 sec  
10:45:18 Gradle build finished in 3 min 1 sec  
10:48:49 Gradle build finished in 3 min 30 sec  
10:53:05 Gradle build finished in 3 min 22 sec  
10:57:10 Gradle build finished in 3 min 19 sec  
10:57:11 Session 'app': running  

Answer 1

Following the steps will make it 10 times faster and reduce build time 90%

First create a file named gradle.properties in the following directory:

/home/<username>/.gradle/ (Linux)
/Users/<username>/.gradle/ (Mac)
C:\Users\<username>\.gradle (Windows)

Add this line to the file:

org.gradle.daemon=true

org.gradle.parallel=true

Answer 2

I was facing the same problem for a long time but I solved it by adjusting the settings in gradle.

Step 1:In Module app add dependency in BuildScript

buildscript {
 dependencies {
         classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.0.0-alpha9'
}
}

Step 2: Add dexOption and give the following heapSize

  dexOptions {
    incremental = true;
    preDexLibraries = false
    javaMaxHeapSize "4g"
}

Step 3: Add productFlavors

    productFlavors {
    dev {
        minSdkVersion 23
        applicationId = "com.Reading.home"
    }
    prod {
        minSdkVersion 15
        applicationId = "com.Reading.home" // you don't need it, but can be useful

    }
}

This should reduce your build time.

Answer 3

I had issues like this especially when debugging actively through my phone; at times it took 27 minutes. I did the following things and take note of the explanation under each - one may work for you:

1. Changed my gradle.properties file (under Gradle scripts if you have the project file view under Android option OR inside your project folder). I added this because my computer has some memory to spare - you can assign different values at the end depending on your computer specifications and android studio minimum requirements (Xmx8000m -XX:MaxPermSize=5000m) :

org.gradle.daemon=true

org.gradle.configureondemand=true

org.gradle.parallel=true

android.enableBuildCache=true

org.gradle.caching=true

org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx8000m -XX:MaxPermSize=5000m -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

2. This did not completely solve my issue in my case. Therefore I also did as others had suggested before - to make my builds process offline:

File -> Settings/Preferences -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Gradle

Global Gradle Settings (at the bottom)

Mark the checkbox named: Offline Work.

3. This reduced time substantially but it was erratic; at times took longer. Therefore I made some changes on Instant Run:

File -> Settings/Preferences -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Instant Run

Checked : Enable Instant Run to hot swap code...

Checked: restart activity on code changes ...

4. The move above was erratic also and therefore I sought to find out if the problem may be the processes/memory that ran directly on either my phone and computer. Here I freed up a little memory space in my phone and storage (which was at 98% utilized - down to 70%) and also on task manager (Windows), increased the priority of both Android Studio and Java.exe to High. Take this step cautiously; depends on your computer's memory.

5. After all this my build time while debugging actively on my phone at times went down to 1 ~ 2 minutes but at times spiked. I decided to do a hack which surprised me by taking it down to seconds best yet on the same project that gave me 22 - 27 minutes was 12 seconds!:

Connect phone for debugging then click RUN

After it starts, unplug the phone - the build should continue faster and raise an error at the end indicating this : Session 'app': Error Installing APKs

Reconnect back the phone and click on RUN again...

ALTERNATIVELY

If the script/function/method I'm debugging is purely JAVA, not JAVA-android e.g. testing an API with JSONArrays/JSONObjects, I test my java functions/methods on Netbeans which can compile a single file and show the output faster then make necessary changes on my Android Studio files. This also saves me a lot of time.

EDIT

I tried creating a new android project in local storage and copied all my files from the previous project into the new one - java, res, manifest, gradle app and gradle project (with latest gradle classpath dependency). And now I can build on my phone in less than 15 seconds.

Answer 4

Check your Internet connection. If internet speed is very slow gradle build will also take long time to build. I check by change my wifi internet connection with another one good speed connection. Now build time is normal. Please try this before you go to other solutions. somebody will take wrong decision to reinstall or change settings. I hope it will help. Thanks and regards.

Answer 5

Found the reason!! If Android Studio has a proxy server setting and can't reach the server then it takes a long time to build, probably its trying to reach the proxy server and waiting for a timeout. When I removed the proxy server setting its working fine.

Removing proxy: File > Settings > Appearance & Behavior > System settings > HTTP Proxy

Answer 6

I had a similar issue on my computer. Windows Defender was blocking some part of Gradle Building. I've disabled it, worked fine after that.