Detecting Memory Leaks in Android Applications
Article Summary
Dropbox's Android team was fighting OutOfMemoryError crashes. The culprit? Memory leaks hiding in activity lifecycles that traditional debugging couldn't catch.
Lily Chen from Dropbox shares how her team built an automated system to detect and fix memory leaks before they reach production. The post covers common leak patterns, detection strategies using LeakCanary, and practical fixes that reduced crashes.
Key Takeaways
- Fragment views referencing long-lived services create leaks between onDestroy callbacks
- LeakCanary integrated with Bugsnag and CI tests surfaces leaks automatically
- ViewBindingHolder eliminates boilerplate and prevents view lifecycle leaks in fragments
- Temporal leaks from async tasks require longer profiling to distinguish from real issues
Critical Insight
Automating leak detection in CI with LeakCanary catches bad patterns before production, teaching engineers better coding practices while protecting users on lower-end devices.
