Memory Profilers

In this document

• Memory Monitor
• Heap Viewer
• Allocation Tracker

You should also read

• Memory Monitor Walkthrough
• Heap Viewer Walkthrough
• Allocation Tracker Walkthrough

Figure 1. Memory Monitor.

• Shows available and used memory as they both change over time for your app in a graph, with dips indicating Garbage Collection (GC) events.
• Provides a quick way to test whether app slowness might be related to excessive GC events.
• Provides a quick way to see whether app crashes might be related to running out of memory.
• Runs live on your application and updates about once a second.
• Helps quickly identify the potential of memory leaks.
• Helps identify GC patterns for your application and determine whether they are healthy and what you expect.
• Is easy to use, and it is easy to interpret what you see.
• However, Memory Monitor does not tell you which objects are the cause of your problems, or where in your code it might be.

Heap Viewer

Figure 2. Heap Viewer.

• Shows snapshots of a number of objects allocated by type.
• Samples data every time a garbage collection event occurs naturally or triggered by you.
• Helps identify which object types might be involved in memory leaks.
• However, you have to look for changes over time yourself by tracking what's happening in the graph.

Allocation Tracker

Figure 3. Allocation Tracker.

• Shows when and where your code allocates object types, their size, allocating thread, and stack traces.
• Helps recognize memory churn through recurring allocation/deallocation patterns.
• Can be used in combination with Heap Viewer to track down memory leaks. For example, if you see a bitmap object resident on the heap, you can find its allocation location with Allocation Tracker.
• However, it takes time and experience to learn to interpret the output from this tool.