Android: my application is too large and gives “Unable to execute dex: method ID not in [0, 0xffff]: 65536”?

Question

I am trying to integrate my application with Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive. All 3 of these services require a number of 3rd party jars. Additionally, my application alrea

Answer 1

***NEW**** All of the other answers are now outdated. Here's the new fix

Android 5.0 and higher

Multi-dex support is included automatically. From the docs:

Android 5.0 and higher uses a runtime called ART which natively supports loading multiple dex files from application APK files. ART performs pre-compilation at application install time which scans for classes(..N).dex files and compiles them into a single .oat file for execution by the Android device. For more information on the Android 5.0 runtime, see Introducing ART.

Below Android 5.0

Simply add the Android mult-dex support tool to your gradle build:

android {
    compileSdkVersion 21
    buildToolsVersion "21.1.0"

    defaultConfig {
        ...
        minSdkVersion 14
        targetSdkVersion 21
        ...

        // Enabling multidex support.
        multiDexEnabled true
    }
    ...
}

dependencies {
  compile 'com.android.support:multidex:1.0.0'
}