iOS × Memory Leaks
iOS Memory Leaks
We track 12 iOS Memory Leaks case studies from 10 engineering teams. Grab, Meta and Expedia write about it most. Many posts also cover Developer Tools and App Stability. The posts run from 2014 to 2025. The newest is from July 2025.
iOS Memory Leaks articles 1–12 of 12
Debugging OOMs: SQLite Query Optimization
Brian Terczynski from Thumbtack tracked down a brutal Android OOM bug that was crashing apps at startup—and the culprit wasn't a memory leak. It was hiding in plain sight: their SQLite queries.
How we reduced peak memory and CPU usage of the product configuration management SDK
Grab's configuration management SDK was crushing service performance with memory spikes and CPU throttling. 98% of services were loading 100x more data than they actually needed.
Advanced Lottie Animation Memory Management in iOS
Timotius Leonardo Lianoto from IDN Media discovered their livestream gift animations were silently eating memory with every play. Even following Lottie's official docs didn't prevent the leak.
Debugging High Latency in the Market Store
Grab's ML feature store went from 200ms to 2 second latency. The culprit? A single line of code in an async library.
How Optimizing Memory Management with LMDB Boosted Performance on Our API Service
Pinterest's API team just freed up 4.5GB of memory per host with a clever database swap. The result? Fewer servers, happier users, and a masterclass in optimization.
Removing 30% of our iOS crashes
Robinhood eliminated 30% of ALL iOS crashes by refactoring a single screen. That screen drove 30% of their revenue at the time.
Swift Collections Library
Karoy Lorentey from Apple's Swift team just dropped three game-changing data structures that could make your Swift code faster and more reliable. Array and Dictionary aren't enough anymore.
Solving Native Memory Leaks in Mobile Apps
Sid Rathi from Expedia Group debugged a production nightmare: KStream apps dying in an endless OOM loop. The culprit? A single unclosed iterator eating native memory.
Hermes JavaScript Engine for React Native
Facebook just open-sourced Hermes, a JavaScript engine built specifically for React Native on Android. This isn't just another optimization tweak. It's a ground-up rethink of how JS should run on mobile.
Automatic memory leak detection on iOS
Meta tackled one of iOS development's most painful problems: memory leaks that crash apps and kill performance. They automated the entire detection process.
Reducing FOOMs in the Facebook iOS app
Meta's iOS team faced a silent killer: crashes that left no trace, no stack trace, no clue. Just frustrated users and a mystery to solve.
Garbage Collection Optimization: High Throughput and Low Latency Java Applications
LinkedIn Engineering cut their tail latency by 75% through systematic garbage collection tuning. Here's their playbook for high-performance Java apps.