Android Context Memory Leak ListView due to AudioM

Question

I have a ListView and I would expect it to be cleared from memory when the activity finishes. However, it appears that it is leaking. When I check the Memory Dump, and get the pathToGC for the ListView I get the following,

Class Name                                                          | Shallow Heap | Retained Heap 
android.widget.ExpandableListView @ 0x4063e560                      |          768 |        39,904 
|- list, mList com.hitpost.TeamChooser @ 0x405f92e8                 |          176 |         1,648 
|  '- mOuterContext android.app.ContextImpl @ 0x40657368            |          160 |           304 
|     '- mContext android.media.AudioManager @ 0x40662600           |           40 |           168 
|        '- this$0 android.media.AudioManager$1 @ 0x406626b0 Unknown|           24 |            24 

I see this same context leaking on a lot of of my ListView's. The trick is that, I am not using AudioManager anywhere in my app at all, no sound coming from the app at all. Please help, it's driving me crazy. Obviously trying to figure out why this is happening and what could be the root issue?

Answer 1

There are several references to AudioManager in your code that you don't create actively. E.g. each clickable View might have one to play onClick sounds [source]. I guess that is the link.

The code looks like it would not create references to AudioManager if you disable the click sounds in your Settings. You could try that and check if there is still a leak.

The reason for your leak might be that you are holding onto some View object in your ListView (Adapter?) code. If you keep them around then you might have a View that has an AudioManager reference and that keeps a Context reference)

Answer 2

The most common reason that I found in my application was due to initializing some components via the XML file. When you do that, the Activity Context gets injected but sometimes all you need is an ApplicationContext. With respect to the Web View in Android, this technique greatly helped me a lot.