Jetpack Compose Performance – System Trace, Recomposer, And The...

Jetpack Compose did not eliminate performance problems.

Apps no longer suffer from deep view hierarchies, but they now suffer from:

This article explains how Compose performance truly behaves at runtime, using System Trace as the source of truth.

Before profiling Compose, you must understand the pipeline:

Profiler data only makes sense inside this sequence.

Android System Trace showing the full Compose frame lifecycle from VSYNC through recomposition and rendering.

Critical insight: If applyChanges misses the deadline, no optimization elsewhere matters.

What hurts performance is what you do during recomposition.

System Trace highlighting Recomposer activity and applyChanges duration impacting frame rendering.

Senior insight: Frequent recomposition is fine. Expensive recomposition is fatal.

Source: Dev.to