AdView causes memory leak

Question

I'm using AdView and LeakCanary. Fragment that hosts adView call adView.destroy() in onDestroy, but LeakCanary shows that Activity that hosts this fragment is leaked by com.google.android.gms.common.api.a.a.a.i . Heap dump also shows that there are memory leak. When I remove AdView.loadAd() and not loading Ad in fragment - there is no leak. Any thoughts or suggestions ? Thanks.

Answer 1

Same problem, AdView have an internal variable (strong reference) holding onto the context, which is my Activity, causing a leak of the Activity instance.

My dependency is com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:8.3.0

A workaround is to supply the Application Context when creating the AdView instance.

AdView adview = new AdView(getApplicationContext());

Answer 2

I think passing App Context to AdView is not a solution really. Because issue is that AdView is not freeing up Context Object. So it will not free up App Context if you pass it.

So below can be a workaround to prevent leak truely.

@Override
protected void onDestroyView() {
    super.onDestroy();
    if (adview != null && adview.getParent() != null) // inflated by XML and remove here from parent
        ((ViewGroup) adview.getParent()).removeView(adview);
    adview.destroy(); 
    adview = null;
}

1. Destroy Adview in onDestroyView

• Fragment lifecycle has method onDestroyView, that is called when view is destroyed, so you should exactly destroy AdView at this place.
• In your case you are destroying AdView in onDestroy (After onDestroyView) so it is a leak. Because AdView is still there after Fragment View is destroyed.
• An Activity has NO onDestroyView method, view is destroyed in onDestroy in Activity. So there we clear objects in onDestroy.

2. Remove AdView from View programmatically.

But if we are using adView in XML then this cant be done.

Because you want inflate AdView from XML so removing View in onDestroy will do the job for you.

3. Make AdView NULL in onDestroyView

Make AdView null in onDestroy. Thus AdView object will not be referred anymore. and it will be cleaned by Garbage collector.

I hope this information is useful for you. :)

Answer 3

Can you try the following:

• move your logic in onDestroyView()

• first remove your adView from its container and then call destroy(), i.e.

  ViewParent parent = adView.getParent();
  if (parent != null && parent instanceof ViewGroup) {
    ((ViewGroup) parent).removeView(adView);
  }
  
  adView.destroy();
  adView = null;