android memory leak in notification service

Question

I have a service which creates a notification and then updates it with certain information periodically. After about 12 mins or so the phone crashes and reboots, I believe it is caused by a memory leak in the following code to do with how I am updating the notification, could someone please check/advise me if this is the case and what I am doing wrong.

onCreate:

mNotificationManager = (NotificationManager) getSystemService(NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);

createNotification:

private void createNotification() {
  Intent contentIntent = new Intent(this,MainScreen.class);
  contentIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP);
  PendingIntent appIntent =PendingIntent.getActivity(this,0, contentIntent, 0);

  contentView = new RemoteViews(getPackageName(), R.layout.notification);
  contentView.setImageViewResource(R.id.image, R.drawable.icon);
  contentView.setTextViewText(R.id.text, "");

  notification = new Notification();
  notification.when=System.currentTimeMillis();
  notification.contentView = contentView;
  notification.contentIntent = appIntent;
}

updateNotification:

private void updateNotification(String text){
  contentView.setTextViewText(R.id.text, text);
  mNotificationManager.notify(0, notification);
}

Thanks in advance.

Datestamp

Please post some of the Logcat right before the reboot – Rutabaga

It's just GC getting bigger and bigger until it causes problems and starts killing stuff and reboots – Datestamp

Make sure that it is for sure your application. Try fully uninstalling it and see if it still happens. Might be some other app you installed recently. – Gestate

It is for my app, occurs in emulators too. – Datestamp

Are you sure it's this service? As in if you comment out everything the service does does it still have the same problem? – Ventricose

I have posted a very similar case with code and logcat output here: > https://mcmap.net/q/901421/-huge-memory-usage-in-notifications/435855 I hope it helps – Hooghly

Do you see OutOfMemoryError anywhere? Either as a pop-up or in the Logcat? – Earshot

I've seen the same behaviour myself - the solution was to remove the progress bar. – Wastrel

Same here, but phone isn't rebooting.. Only the notification gets frozen after some time. – Ingesta

Answer 1

I stumbled upon the same problem. Looks like that if you don't "cache" the RemoteView and Notification in the service, but re-create them from scratch in the "update" routine this problem disappears. Yes, I know it is not efficient, but at least the phone does not reboot from out of memory errors.

Scarce

Hmmm weird, I'll try this after the holidays to confirm. – Datestamp

Hi, I am updating a notification's Remote View (precisely 3 textviews inside it) continuously (after each second) using a service. The phone gets super slow and freezes after some time. Should I recreate notification for this problem too? – Escargot

@berserk, Yes, you should. – Pisano

@Sakiboy as you have said dont update it too often...but i am using progress to show download...so i have to update it as per my download...what can i do? – Antipyrine

@HRaval , check out my answer here: https://mcmap.net/q/901422/-android-download-file-status-bar-notification-slowing-down-phone. Basically you only want to update the notification if and only if the progress actually changed. – Consort

Answer 2

I had the very same problem. My solution is close to the one that @haimg said, but I do cache the notification (just the RemoteView is recreated). By doing so, the notification won't flash again if you are looking at it.

Example:

public void createNotification(Context context){
    Notification.Builder builder = new Notification.Builder(context);

    // Set notification stuff...

    // Build the notification
    notification = builder.build();
}

public void updateNotification(){
    notification.bigContentView = getBigContentView();
    notification.contentView = getCompactContentView();

    mNM.notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, notification);
}

And in the methods getBigContentView and getCompactContentView I return a new RemoteViews with the updated layout.

Correction