Android memory leak with Glide

Question

I have an activity which loads pictures in ImageViews with glide. Here is a sample of my glide code:

    Glide.with(ImageVOne.getContext())
            .load(geoInfo.getPhotoUrl1())
            .skipMemoryCache(true)
            .priority(Priority.NORMAL)
            .into(ImageVOne);

I load from 1 to 35 pictures, each picture should be between 150ko & 250ko. I cannot reduce that.

This activity can be accessed several times in a session from the main activity, and each time it loads different pictures. For example the first time it will be pictures of Washington, then pictures of London etc.

My issue is that the use of memory increases a lot every time the activity that loads the pictures is started:

I can start the activity from 3 to 5 times, then the app crashes. The error message is

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Failed to allocate a 1411340 byte allocation with 1126320 free bytes and 1099KB until OOM

I read posts about memory leaks but I thought Glide would avoid this issue. My activity with the pictures is finished before another one is started, but the memory allocated to my app do not seem to drop. I also added android:noHistory="true" to my picture activity in the Manifest but it doesn't change anything.

I added android:largeHeap="true" in my Manifest but it just postpone my issue (I can start the pictures activity about 10 to 15 times) and I get a lot of pictures not loaded in my imageviews before the app crashes, so its not a good solution for me.

I also tried to add .skipMemoryCache (true) when I use glide but I don't notice any change.

I guess my "memory use" should decrease every time I go from the pictures activity to the main activity, then increase when I start my pictures activity again with new pictures. But from what I see on the blue graph it almost only increases. Do you see what I should do?

Answer 1

You can take several measures to prevent getting Out of Memory Error. They are as follows.

1. Using GridView/RecycleView to show images. Because they load only what they show. Suppose you have 50 images and 10 images are visible to your screen, it will load only 10. This will ease the pressure from your memory.

2. Use PLACEHOLDER to load image instead of black-space. You can use low resolution image in drawable as placeholder.

3. Use THUMBNAILS instead of actual images.

4. You may use fixed dp for height and width of imageView.

5. Set skipMemoryCache to true.

6. CLEAR GLIDE memory onDestroy();

   @Override public void onDestroy() {
       super.onDestroy();
       Glide.get(this).clearMemory();
   }
   

7. Override to smaller-size :

    .override(500, 600) //as example
   

   Here is a refined code for using GLIDE:

      Glide.with(this)
           .load(url)
           .thumbnail(0.5f)
           .skipMemoryCache(true) 
           .diskCacheStrategy(DiskCacheStrategy.ALL)
           .placeholder(R.drawable.your_placeHolder)
           .into(imageVOne);
   

You may look at catching mechanism of Glide here.