I tried proguard optimization / obfuscation back in the day. I ended up getting some strange crashes, and they were really difficult to debug. I haven’t tried obfuscation with r8 yet. Is it worth trying it out? Is r8 better than proguard?

As far as strange crashes go, the same issues apply with R8. I think if anything, R8 introduces more features that you can use to shoot yourself in the foot with if you're not careful

thanks for the advice. I’ll disable obfuscation then