Memory Leaks in android

Memory leaks in android:

In this blog I want to explore about memory leaks in android programming. The main reason for memory leak is not happening proper garbage collection. It usually happens due to smaller mistakes by programmer but new developer also does not aware about the same.

Here I want to take an Example: Context object is present in each android application it provide application context over the application by getApplicationContext() method. If developer declare any widgets like textView or editText as a static and pass context object then such kind of view holds memory and it would not be garbage collected.

How to define memory leaks:

A failure in program to release discarded memory.

Prevention for memory leak:

There is few coding practices that should be use by developer

1      1)      Never make/store a Context or View in a static variable. This is the first sign of a memory leak  

private static TextView textView;           //DO NOT DO THIS

private static Context context;      //DO NOT DO THIS

2      2)      Do not use more than two same type broad cast receiver like one is already used in third party which linked with your application and you also implement in your application.

3     3)      Don’t store strong references to activities in your AsyncTasks or background threads. Your activity may get closed, but your AsyncTask will continue execution and hold onto that reference of your activity

4     4)      Use Application context (getApplicationContext()) instead of Context from an activity if you can.

5     5)      Proper register and unregister your bound services in android application.

6     6)      Always try to not use non-static inner classes if you can avoid it. Storing reference to something like an Activity or View inside this can lead to memory leaks. Use Weak Reference if you need to store reference to them

Way to fix Memory Leaks:

It is very tough task to find out the memory leak in android even then few tools are available using that we can find where the memory utilization is going across expectation based on this analysis we can find the memory leaks in android.

1      1)      Memory Monitor

2      2)      Heap Viewer

3      3)      Allocation Tracker

This tools can be used by Android studio .Using these tools user can analyze their application memory utilization and able to find out in which activity or part of application taking more memory. Try to optimize the code on required places and avoid the above written prevention things if possible.

For more details of these tools you can go through the developer web site of android.

http://developer.android.com/tools/performance/comparison.html#MemoryMonitor

Hope I have cover most of the memory leak related concept and their prevention. If something more you know about this and I did not mansion in this so you can post the same.