How to enable multidexing with the new Android Multidex support library

Question

I want to use the new Multidex support library to break the method limit for one of my apps.

With Android Lollipop Google introduced a multidex support library that

Answer 1

Here is an up-to-date approach as of October 2020, with Android X. This comes from Android's documentation, "Enable multidex for apps with over 64K methods."

For minSdk >= 21

You do not need to do anything. All of these devices use the Android RunTime (ART) VM, which supports multidex natively.

For minSdk < 21

In your module-level build.gradle, ensure that the following configurations are populated:

android {
    defaultConfig {
        multiDexEnabled true
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'androidx.multidex:multidex:2.0.1'
}

You need to install explicit multidex support. The documentation includes three methods to do so, and you have to pick one.

For example, in your src/main/AndroidManifest.xml, you can declare MultiDexApplication as the application:name: