3 posts tagged with "Debugging"

If you have worked on a mobile app for any amount of time, you already know one thing. Bug reporting is often frustrating. You get a crash log. You get a network error. You get a stack trace that points to the very end of a problem. And then you are left trying to guess everything that happened before that moment.

It feels like walking into a movie three minutes before it ends and trying to guess the entire story.

That is the reality of traditional bug reporting.

Now imagine something different. Imagine being able to see exactly what your app was doing inside its functions. You could see what input it received, how it behaved, where things slowed down, and what actually caused the issue. That is the idea behind function tracking. And once you understand it, you can clearly see why it is a far better approach.

Ever tapped a button in your app and waited... and waited... until you started questioning your life choices?

Yeah, that's an app hang.

It's not a crash. It's worse. Your app doesn't explode, it just freezes. Quietly. Awkwardly. Like someone forgot their lines on stage and now the whole audience is staring.

App hangs are sneaky. They don't always show up in crash reports. But your users feel them. In the lags, the unresponsive screens, the moments when they swipe but nothing moves. And if it happens too often? That uninstall button starts looking real attractive.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Let's fix the freeze before the curtain falls.

Have you ever dated someone who just… wouldn't let go?

You break up, move on, start fresh - and boom - they're still texting, still showing up in your life, refusing to be deleted.

That's your app with a memory leak.

It's holding on to screens, data, and objects long after it should've moved on. You've moved past the Activity, but it's still lingering in memory like a clingy ex who didn't get the memo.

The worst part? You might not even know it's happening.

But users will. They will feel it in the slowdowns, the crashes, the app that once felt smooth now feeling… emotionally unavailable.

And in Android, they're not just annoying. They're dangerous. They can slow down your app, cause freezes, and eventually - boom! A crash.

Let's dive into the most common memory leak scenarios in Android. I'll walk you through real-world examples, show you how to spot them, and most importantly, how to fix them.