Serving Mobile Apps: A Slice at a Time

End users wanting to do more and more with mobile apps has led to explosive growth in the number of available apps. This has widened the gap between developers making apps available and end users being able to install all the apps they want on their device. To address this, Google introduced Instant Apps for Android where users can access selective app features on demand without having to download and install entire apps. But this requires developers to refactor apps and limits the apps' functionality. In this paper, we present AppSlicer -- a solution that automates the creation, delivery, execution and cleanup of lightweight app slices from native apps. With AppSlicer, app slices are created from existing native apps, without requiring any additional developer effort. App slices run on end-user devices and correspond to arbitrary single functionality (task) that is carried out using an app. We demonstrate that app slicing is practical, it provides users with seamless access to app functionality with performance matching that of native installed apps, and better than other technologies for on-demand delivery of apps.