The average size of the top ten apps in the App Store is four times that of five years ago, and Gmail has grown 19 times

According to the latest report released by market research firm Sensor Tower, the capacity of the top ten apps on the App Store is four times that of five years ago, and the capacity of apps is still growing every year. And with the launch of iOS 15, more new technologies and APIs have caused apps to take up more space on the iPhone.

The report states: "With the introduction of these new technologies came an increase in app size, which has grown dramatically as Apple's software has expanded in complexity. For example, according to Sensor Tower App Intelligence, the 10 most downloaded iPhone apps in the U.S. in May were 298% larger than five years ago, requiring an average of 2.2GB of space, compared to just 550MB in 2016."

The study looked at the core size of an app (excluding downloadable content), and the 10 apps were YouTube, TikTok, Messenger, Facebook, Zoom, Netflix, Instagram, Gmail, Google Maps and Amazon.

Sensor Tower data shows that these apps, on average, have grown massively in size since 2016 and now require an average of about 2.2GB of storage space to install, whereas in 2016, they required an average of about 550MB. This means that the average storage requirements of these apps have increased by 298% from 2016.

In 2015, Apple raised the maximum size of apps to 4GB. By far the biggest increase has come from Gmail, which now requires 19 times more storage than it did in 2016. In comparison, the next biggest apps are TikTok and Instagram, which have grown sixfold in size over the past few years.