Some of my view controllers don't get deallocated after being popped from view. I've gotten rid of the other strong references so I'm left with this internal retain cycle held through a reference form _externalObjectsTableForViewLoading. It's a private UIViewController property so I'm unable to clear it myself. I don't know if iOS has an API to clear it or why it's not being cleared after popping the view controller.
I've tested with with my app running in Release mode both in iOS 11 and 12. Running the app in Instruments renders the same stairs pattern seen in Xcode with the view controllers being retained.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
In your problem, is one viewController accessing another viewController? Our problem is that there was a non weak reference to a callback in another viewController.
As mentioned in your and in other posts on this, _externalObjectsTableForViewLoading is a viewController private property, but a storyboard related property. This leads me to think that your code has strong references to another object that is a view controller through a callback or through a direct property reference to its instance.
Related
I have a view controller that is never released once its parent view controller is removed from the view hierarchy and released. Every instance of it within the memory graph looks the same in that it has a single reference to CFNotificationCenter. It appears that other, not relevant, view controllers of a different class all have this same reference but still get released. The view controller in question also doesn't have any NotificationCenter observers so this makes no sense to me.
I have attached an image of the memory graph with the true name of the view controller redacted. I am also sure that this is the full graph of the view controller, I have not have selected to inspect a single reference.
What is happening here? Why won't it be released?
You can see exactly what code is referencing your View Controller:
First, turn on Malloc Stack Logging for your scheme (open the scheme editor with Cmd-Shift-,)
Then, click the "malloc" block that is pointing to your View Controller, and mouseover to the right of Backtrace to find the "Expand" button to see the full stack trace:
However, the most likely culprit is not actually the notification retaining your View Controller, as the reference is not strong (otherwise it would be a bold arrow).
The Xcode memory graph debugger doesn't show you when an object is retaining itself. In my case it was a simple case of retaining self in a closure in my viewDidLoad.
I have this issue in my project too. And I found that if I assign the object to nil while calling CFNotificationCenterAddObserver and CFNotificationCenterRemoveObserver, I still can receive the notification - and without the retain issue when deinitializing the object, which I added as the listener previously.
I have code that replaces an entire stack of ViewControllers in a NavigationController, as sort of a "reset" that switches between a number of different threads of UI scenes. Instead of creating a different NavigationController for each flow in storyboard, I decided to just change the NavigationController.viewControllers array manually:
self.navController.viewControllers = [vc1, vc2]
What happens to the old stack of ViewControllers? Do they automatically get release/unloaded? or do they hang around forever and therefore causing memory leak?
Note:
I know about unwind segue, but I didn't want to use that since even if I unwound to the first VC in NavVC, I still have to replace it with a different VC, and setting .viewController is the only way I know to not result in a "Back button"
What happens to the old stack of ViewControllers?
The viewControllers property points to an array and has copy semantics, so when you assign an array of view controllers to that property, the navigation controller copies the array. When you assign a different array to that property, the previous one will be deallocated (assuming there are no other strong references to it). The same is true for any of the view controllers in the array -- if nothing else has a strong reference to them, they will be deallocated. This is no different from any other Objective-C object.
After you set the new view controllers, your UINavigationController will lose its strong reference to the old stack. If you do not have any remaining strong references to the items in the old stack, they will indeed be released by ARC.
One way to verify this behavior is to override -(void)dealloc in the view controllers you want released, and put some logging in there. you should be able to see when dealloc is called.
I'm pushing and popping ViewControllers in UINavigationController.
I'm tracking the memory consumption of my app.
While pushing the new viewController the memory consumption is increasing gradually, but when I'm popping the same ViewController using [self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:NO]; the memory consumption does not decrease but the constant.
That particular viewController can be pushed and popped by user many times which can lead the high memory consumption of app in RAM.
What should I do to optimise my memory consumption?
When you dismiss a view controller (or pop it), it will be deallocated if you didn't make any strong pointers to it (that controller is retained by the navigation controller, or the presenting view controller, so you usually don't need to have a pointer to it when you create it and push or present it).
It will be be released if there are no other strong pointers to it
Try to avoid using strong properties for IBOutlets.
Consider reviewing whether you are referencing self in a block. If you do, you risk holding onto the UIViewController reference after you have popped it.
For a more in-depth review of why, check out this answer:
How do I avoid capturing self in blocks when implementing an API?
If your app design allows the user to push and pop the same view controller over and over again, you may want to look at reusing the same view controller and just updating its contents each time it's pushed.
Instead of creating and destroying it over and over, create one, set up its contents and push, when it's popped, keep it around ready to be shown again. Next time it needs to be shown, update its contents and then push it again.
I would like to say, that my last few days were spent on searching the web for my app memory problem. I was switching between 2 UIViewControllers. One of them had a scroll view which kept all subviews on it. It turned out that that UIVC loads a new scroll view without releasing the previous one. It took me several hours to realize it.
What I did was:
Looking for any kind of deadlocks inside the app, then searching for every variable that had a strong atributte and other desperate measures. But what really worked was:
#IBAction func backBB(sender: UIBarButtonItem) {
collectionView.removeFromSuperview()
self.frontView.removeFromSuperview()
eventsPhotos.removeAll(keepCapacity: false)
symbolContainerView.removeFromSuperview()
self.myScrollView.removeFromSuperview()
dismissViewControllerAnimated(true, completion: {})
}
I manually removed some views and contents. I've done it in "Back" button but you can do this in other methods like viewWillDisappear(animated: Bool).
Once I made this, my allocation chart in the developer instruments showed the memory allocation going up and down... And it was solved...
I think you get an error, when you try to pop the view controller because the navigation controller does not have a valid reference to the view controller, as it was released after you pushed it.
Nil the popover on dismiss.
[menuPopup_ dismissPopoverAnimated:YES];
menuPopup_ = nil;
Make sure your viewcontroller (A) has no reference of any other viewcontroller (B) or any object it has. Incase it has then make sure that VC-B is not referencing back VC-A. If it has some reference back to VC-A then make it a weak property. Otherwise strong retain cycle will keep the VC in memory even if its popped.
Another thing is to check wether theres any closure in your VC, check its body if it is referencing any property or method with self then make a Capture list to avoid retain cycle as "Closures are Reference Types"
Check if theres any NSNotification observer you are not releasing
Make a print call in deinit method to check wether its deallocated.
For further understanding on memory management:
https://medium.com/mackmobile/avoiding-retain-cycles-in-swift-7b08d50fe3ef
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIy-qnGLpHU
You should use an unwind segue instead of popping.
There's a crash in the app that I'm working on that I'm having a difficult time tracking down the cause of. Here is the only set of events which causes the crash:
The app opens with the main view controller (VCmain) being presented. A button is triggered which opens a modal view controller (VCmodalA) via a segue. VCmodalA simply displays some information gathered about a core data object. VCmodalA is then dismissed by a button press. At some future point another view controller is presented modally (VCmodalB), which has some fields for the creation of a new core data object. After the object is created, if VCmodalB is dismissed, the app crashes with the following error:
*** -[UILabel _supportsContentDimensionVariables]: message sent to deallocated instance 0x818e200
If VCmodalA is not displayed prior to VCmodalB, or a new core data object is not created, or VCmodalB is not dismissed, then no crash occurs. I am at a loss what '_supportsContentDimensionVariables' means or who is sending it, although it appears to be sent to a label which was on VCmodalB (therefore the crash must be caused because a call is being made to a label that was deallocated when the view controller was dismissed).
I've spent hours poking around in Instruments looking at the Zombie left behind and trying to isolate the offending code by commenting it out, but I have been totally unsuccessful. At this point any hints would be welcome!!
Thanks so much!
There are two top causes of these kinds of errors: failure to use ARC, and direct access of ivars (particularly if you're not using ARC). Fixing those two issues is the best way to avoid these kinds of crashes.
As for how to debug it, first, you want to audit your accesses to UILabel objects. If you have any ivars that point to UILabel they should be strong or weak, never assign.
You should make sure that view controllers don't run code when they're not onscreen. This crash makes me think that this is a likely problem. For example, do not setup timers in viewDidLoad or initWithFrame:. Set them up in viewDidAppear: and tear them down in viewWillDisappear:. Similarly for KVO or delegation. View controllers manage views; if they're doing something when their view is not onscreen, your design is incorrect.
I have an iOS-App which uses ARC. I don't use InterfaceBuilder, all UI is generated manually. In that app I have several UIViewControllers with SubViewControllers. Those ViewControllers a tied together from a menu (-ViewController) who pushes them on the stack.
My problem is, that memory doesn't get freed when switching between the ViewControllers.
Is it wrong to keep references to the SubViewControllers like this?
#property (nonatomic, strong) UIViewController subViewController1;
#property (nonatomic, strong) UIViewController subViewController2;
viewDidUnload never gets called. Has anyone a good example how to build a clean view hierarchy?
By assigning the view controllers which get pushed on the stack to a strong instance variable / property, they will not be deallocated when popped off of the stack. The strong properties are holding on to the pushed view controllers even after they are popped off the stack, so they never get to a state where they can be deallocated.
Normally I do something like the following when pushing a next-level-down view controller onto the navigation stack:
SLSMoleculeSearchViewController *searchViewController = [[SLSMoleculeSearchViewController alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewStylePlain];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:searchViewController animated:YES];
Under ARC, the new view controller will be allocated and will be retained on creation. When pushed onto the navigation stack, it will be retained once by the navigation controller. Because this new view controller is not referred to after being pushed, and is not assigned to a strong property or instance variable, ARC will release it after the second line.
Remember, it's still being retained by the navigation controller, so it's still live in memory. However, once the navigation controller pops it off the stack this view controller will be released. Since nothing is holding on to it at that point, it will be deallocated as expected.
If for some reason you need to maintain a reference to this sub view controller in your higher-level view controller, you could use a weak property or __weak instance variable. This will not hold on to the view controller, and will turn to nil once the controller is deallocated.
weak references are only supported for applications that target iOS 5.0, though, so you won't be able to do this for anything that needs to run on iOS 4.0. The 4.0-compatible unsafe_unretained property is not something I would recommend in this case, due to the danger of a pointer to deallocated memory.
This most likely has nothing to do with ARC. viewDidUnload is only called on a view controller when the view property is released / set to nil and this typically only happens if the app receives a memory warning.
Try triggering a memory warning in the simulator and see if that causes your viewDidUnload method to fire. If it does then everything is fine. If not, you are probably over-retaining your views somehow, perhaps by assigning them to other strongly retained properties.
There are exceptions to the view-retaining policy, for example the UINavigationController frees up views in its view controller stack if they aren't frontmost, but it does that by simply setting the view of its child controllers to nil when they're covered by another controller's view.
If you want your views to be released when they aren't onscreen, either set the controller's view property to nil in the viewDidDisappear: method, or stop retaining the view controllers when their views aren't onscreen and just create fresh controller instances each time you need to display them (that way both the controller and view will be released when not in use).