Removing unused resources requires unused code shrinking to be turned on
You might want to refer to the Android Documentation to shrink your code and resources:
Shrink your code and resources
Like a comment already pointed out, resource shrinking only works when you have used the code shrinker. To enable shrinkResources
in your build.gradle
file you must have first set minifyEnabled
to true
Resource shrinking works only in conjunction with code shrinking. After the code shrinker removes all unused code, the resource shrinker can identify which resources the app still uses. This is especially true when you add code libraries that include resources—you must remove unused library code so the library resources become unreferenced and, thus, removable by the resource shrinker
To enable resource shrinking, set the shrinkResources property to true in your build.gradle file (alongside minifyEnabled for code shrinking). For example:
android {
...
buildTypes {
release {
shrinkResources true
minifyEnabled true
proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'),
'proguard-rules.pro'
}
}
}
reference
Maybe you set by mistake minifyEnabled = false
and shrinkResources = true
in your buildTypes.debug, so, maybe, it is a root of a problem, not your buildTypes.release