New Google Mandate: All Android Apps Must Support 16KB Page Size by November 1, 2025

Google has already mandated that beginning November 1, 2025, all applications targeting Android 15 and above must support a 16KB memory page size. In other words, developers wishing to publish or update apps through the Google Play Store will be required to meet this fundamental technical standard.

The decision to increase the default page size stems from the widespread adoption of 64-bit processors and devices equipped with larger memory capacities. By shifting Android’s memory page size from 4KB to 16KB, Google aims to significantly enhance performance, particularly on higher-memory devices.

According to Google’s internal benchmarks, the switch to a 16KB page size can reduce application startup times by up to 30% and lower power consumption by 4.56%. For example, the default Android camera app demonstrated a 4.48% improvement in warm startup speed and a 6.60% improvement in cold startup speed.

To ease the transition for developers, Microsoft has announced that .NET MAUI 9 and .NET for Android now natively support the 16KB page size, requiring no additional configuration—allowing developers to meet Google’s requirement seamlessly.

Microsoft notes, however, that automatic support for the new page size requires an upgrade to .NET 9. The company has also reminded developers that .NET MAUI 8 reached end-of-life on May 14, 2025, urging teams to complete migrations promptly.

In its announcement, Microsoft emphasized that all dependencies within a .NET MAUI project must also support the 16KB page size. Otherwise, the build process will fail with an error message such as:

Android 16 will require 16 KB page sizes, shared library ‘{library_name}’ does not have a 16 KB page size. Please inform the authors of the NuGet package ‘{package_name}’ version ‘{version}’ which contains ‘{file_path}’. See https://developer.android.com/guide/practices/page-sizes for more details.

If developers encounter such an error, it indicates that one or more dependencies are incompatible with the 16KB page size requirement. To resolve this, Microsoft recommends three critical steps:

1. Update dependencies to their latest compatible versions.
2. Contact the package maintainers to request or confirm updates for 16KB support.
3. Seek alternatives if a dependency is no longer maintained.

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