How can I free Drawable memory in one Android Honeycomb Activity after a different Activity has started?

Also for me OnPause event is a better place where put your "memory-free" code.

Also for me OnPause event is a better place where put your "memory-free" code. Here the event flow when you open a child activity from a parent activity -- Open caller activity -- ActCaller 1311090884303: onCreate ActCaller 1311090884572: onStart ActCaller 1311090884699: onPostCreate savedInstanceState null ActCaller 1311090884802: onResume ActCaller 1311090884908: onPostResume -- Open child activity -- ActCaller 1311090926270: onSaveInstanceState ActCaller 1311090926374: onPause ActChild 1311090926556: onCreate ActChild 1311090926703: onStart ActChild 1311090926807: onPostCreate savedInstanceState null ActChild 1311090926911: onResume ActChild 1311090927014: onPostResume ActCaller 1311090927508: onStop As you already noticed, parent's onStop is called only after complete child creation. What about calling memory-free code from two different location?

Consider that dialogs, generally, don't completely cover calling activity, so preserving it's background has a sense. Maybe a flag can be set when you open a new activity instead of a dialog, and OnPause logic will drop background only when a new activity is launched, and not a dialog.

That's actually very helpful generally, thank you—the interlocking of two activity lifecycles isn't very well documented that I can see! My only slight concern is that using onPause() might end up removing the drawable in circumstances where I don't want it removed. I guess I can only try it though :) – Andrew Wyld Oct 25 '11 at 10:31.

There is no special way for handling such things, it's regular java way: Objects are garbage collected at an unknown time in future if they are no longer referenced. Just don't keep a reference to anything you don't need, and you will be fine. Check this video for great info on this: youtube.com/watch?v=_CruQY55HOk.

That doesn't work in this case: I have removed all explicit references to these objects, but in one case some implicit references are kept. In one situation the method I have described for getting rid of the implicit references works; in another situation, it doesn't. I am trying to work out why, because I need to remove these implicit references.

– Andrew Wyld Oct 25 '11 at 10:27 @AndrewWyld: Use MAT to determine exactly what the "implicit reference" is. – CommonsWare Oct 25 '11 at 11:17 I have done and can tell you: the background LinearLayout contains a reference to a Bitmap (as described in the original question). Calling setBackgroundDrawable(null) from onStop() frees this reference if you hit the power button (triggering a sleep state) but not if you launch another Activity with an Intent; however it does work from onPause().

This suggests you can't change the background of a View when it's not part of the active context, so purging memory from onStop() doesn't work. – Andrew Wyld Oct 25 '11 at 11:54.

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