Microsoft reveals performance boost for .NET MAUI apps after Google forces 16 KB page sizes

Microsoft has reminded .NET developers for Android that they need to update their apps to support 16 KB page size by November. Its latest .NET MAUI 9 supports this automatically.

From November 1, 2025, all new and updated apps targeting Android 15+ must support 16 KB page sizes on 64-bit devices for Google Play submission. Google decided to move Android from 4 KB to 16 KB memory page sizes to optimize performance, especially on devices with larger RAM. Benefits include low app launch times (3.16% average improvement, up to 30% for some apps) and reduced power usage (4.56% average reduction). One notable example of the benefits is the Android camera app which now has 4.48% faster hot starts and 6.60% faster cold starts.

Android developers that use .NET have some good news on the page-size front from Microsoft. With .NET MAUI 9 (and .NET for Android), the new requirement is already supported out of the box. The .NET 9 upgrade is required for this automatic support, and it’s a good idea to upgrade if you haven’t already as .NET MAUI 8 was already deprecated on May 14, 2025.

Microsoft said that all dependencies in your .NET MAUI project must also support 16 KB page sizes. Developers using dependencies that don’t meet this will see warnings 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 you do run into these warnings, there are three necessary steps to take. Update the dependency to a compliant version, contact the package author to let them know to update, or find an alternative if the package is unmaintained.

If you’re a developer pushing apps on the Google Play Store and still haven’t updated your app, there’s plenty of time left to do it. To get started, upgrade to .NET 9, check your dependencies for 16 KB compatibility, update or replace non-compliant dependencies, and test the app in a 16 KB environment with an emulator or on actual hardware with developer options. To learn more, check out Microsoft’s announcement.