Hello chaps.
I've been testing something tonight. I tried saving an svg where the only thing visible was a single shape. There are three more layers with multiple shapes, but hidden. The file counts more than 50kb in size. If I delete the hidden layers, the file shrinks to a mere 5kb. It's obvious that Inkscape is saving the data from all layers. What's the best way to overcome this? I can use multiple separate files and keep deleting the unused layers, but I can think that's pretty error prone...

Any help is welcome.
Regards, inkschaap

So you want the file size to be reduced when you hide layers? I don't know how that could be possible.

Could you tell us a little more about what it is that you want to accomplish....or why having hidden layers count in the file size, is an issue for you?

File menu > Vacuum Defs might reduce the file size, if it has a lot of unused defs. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're asking. The title of your message mentions export. Do you mean export to PNG? Are you talking about the file size after export, or the size of the SVG?