ProGuard® 20th Anniversary

Learn how the Java bytecode shrinker ProGuard® began enhancing and optimizing apps all over the world by scrolling our timeline or watching our video below.

The ProGuard® Story:
20 years of innovation in Java optimization

This month we are kicking off our ProGuard® 20th Anniversary celebrations with a giveaway!
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Here we'll take you through ProGuard®'s journey over the past two decades and how it's grown from a small hobby project to a leading open-source Java optimization tool.

2002

May 1, 2002 First code commit in ProGuard® Repository

Right from the start ProGuard® was readily available for Android covered desktop, server and early mobile devices using J2ME.

By the end of 2004, Java was running on 1.5 billion devices.

June 2002 Version 1.0 released to public

1.0

Bytecode optimization was added in 2004 to shrink applications even more.

2010
December 2010 ProGuard® integrated in Android SDK

The release of Android 2.3 (gingerbread) marked the first release that made ProGuard® readily available for Android developers worldwide.

2012
2012 DexGuard created

Layered on top of ProGuard®, DexGuard becomes the preferred choice by Android developers to protect their app from static and dynamic analysis.

The first DexGuard logo

2014
2014 Guardsquare founded by Eric Lafortune & Heidi Rakels

Our portfolio of solutions now protects over 6 billion app users.

1. Optimize

2. Protect

3. Test

4. Monitor

2020 ProGuard® project moves from SourceForge to GitHub

2020

Between 2002 and 2020 ProGuard® would see over 1 million downloads from SourceForge.

Screenshot of the ProGuard® repository on GitHub

2020

June 2020 ProGuardCORE released

With ProGuardCORE, developers can now easily use the same tools used by ProGuard® & DexGuard for code analysis and bytecode manipulation in their own projects.