Android memory

The following pages provide information about improving your app's use of memory.

General memory guidance

Memory overview: Explains core Android memory architecture, RAM constraints, and how the operating system balances processes using the Low Memory Killer (LMK).
Memory management: Outlines developer best practices for releasing resources across component lifecycles, avoiding leaks, and managing memory when transitioning between process states.
Understanding and troubleshooting Android memory: Provides a comprehensive overview of Android memory architecture, the tools available for analysis, and hands-on exercises to help you identify and resolve memory-related issues.

Games memory overview: Details memory budgeting, native allocation handling, and graphic asset management guidance tailored specifically for apps using game engines.
Optimizing bitmap images: Demonstrates how to size, decode, and cache bitmap assets efficiently within image libraries.
Manage and diagnose WebView memory: Explains the WebView multi-process memory model, describes how to properly manage its lifecycle to prevent leaks, and provides practical workflows for diagnosing memory issues.
R8 code optimization: Explains how to leverage R8 to reduce APK size, metadata overhead, and runtime memory consumption.

Android Studio tools: Provides real-time heap inspection, memory allocation tracking, and leak detection workflows directly inside the IDE.
Perfetto Heap Dump Explorer: Offers deep visual analysis of native and Java or Kotlin heap dumps to isolate retained object trees and anonymous memory allocations.
Capture a system trace on device: Shows how to record on device system level traces to address performance-related bugs in your app.
Debugging memory usage on Android: Teaches how to understand Linux memory management and use tools like dumpsys meminfo, Perfetto, native heap profiles, and heap dumps to track memory usage and identify leaks.

Android vitals: Memory usage (anonymous RSS + swap): Android vitals shares your app's production memory usage broken down by the process states foreground, foreground service, and background service.
Android vitals: Bitmap memory usage: Android vitals provides metrics on an app's bitmap memory footprint by aggregating data from Android devices.
Android vitals: DEX code optimization: Android vitals can alert you when your app's DEX code optimization levels are low. This includes obfuscation, shrinking, and optimization for apps and games that use R8.
Crashlytics 20.1.0: Surfaces production Out-Of-Memory (OOM) exceptions and memory limiter kills with diagnostic context to prioritize and fix field crashes.
ProfilingManager: Advanced API that lets apps programmatically collect and upload production heap dumps and heap profiles from live user sessions.