Allocation Tracker Walkthrough

This walkthrough shows the basic usage and workflow for the Allocation Tracker tool in Android Studio. Allocation Tracker records an app's memory allocations and lists all allocated objects for the profiling cycle with their call stack, size, and allocating code.

What it's good for:

• Identifying where many similar object types, from roughly the same call stack, are allocated and deallocated over a very short period of time.
• Finding the places in your code that may contribute to inefficient memory use.

Before using Allocation Tracker, profile your code with the Memory Monitor Tool. If you see many garbage collection events in a short amount of time, use Heap Viewer to identify candidate object types, and Allocation Tracker to determine where this is happening in your code.

Prerequisites

• A mobile device with Developer Options enabled.
• Application code. Use your own code, or the Sunshine sample app from the Android Fundamentals Udacity course.

Working with Allocation Tracker

Allocation Tracker records each memory allocation that your app performs during the profiling cycle. You tell Allocation Tracker to start recording and it logs allocations until you tell it to stop.

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  Figure 1. Steps for starting Allocation Tracker.

  1. Connect your mobile device to your computer.
  2. Open your application in Android Studio, build the source, and run it on your device.
  3. Click the Android button at the bottom of your Android Studio window.
  4. Click the RECORD button (Start Allocation Tracking tooltip).
  5. Interact with your application.
  6. Click the (same) STOP button (Stop Allocation Tracking tooltip).

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  Figure 2. Example of Allocation Tracker output.

  7. After a few seconds, a pane with your recorded data opens.

     Note that allocations are logged on the device, and the data file is transferred to the host computer, parsed for information, and displayed.

  8. The pane populates with a table.
     • Each row represents a memory allocation event.
     • Each column represents information about the allocation, such as the object type, the thread, and its size.
     • The columns are movable, resizable, and sortable.

     Use the Filter to show only allocations from your app.

  9. Click on an object to see its full stack trace.