google_maps_flutter Memory Leak when map is shown, memory allocated never dispose

[darkmarthur]

Steps to Reproduce

Problem:

I have been facing a critical issue with the GoogleMap plugin, the problem is on iOS devices, when the GoogleMap widget is RENDERED (please note that the problem is not when instantiating the object) it appends a lot of memory to the current app, when the map is disposed, that memory allocated never goes away, it keeps growing as the Map is called to be shown.

Why it is a critical issue:

This is a critical issue because on iOS when the app reaches approximately 1gb the OS closes the app unexpectedly, and its a blocker to launch our app to production.

Replicate:

Use the memory monitor of XCode, not the dart tools,
This is not replicable on the emulator, only on real iOS devices, you can use the google_maps_flutter example to test.

Request:

Please let us know if you can replicate the issue just to be sure that this is on your scope

Evidence:

Video from the google_maps_flutter example performance
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1c78VJhBYsKc8HRX-8_RiR56J1LHnoWvJ

Marios-MacBook-Air:example mario$ flutter doctor -v
[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, v1.5.4-hotfix.2, on Mac OS X 10.14.5 18F132, locale en-MX)
    • Flutter version 1.5.4-hotfix.2 at /Users/mario/Documents/flutter
    • Framework revision 7a4c33425d (8 weeks ago), 2019-04-29 11:05:24 -0700
    • Engine revision 52c7a1e849
    • Dart version 2.3.0 (build 2.3.0-dev.0.5 a1668566e5)

 
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 28.0.3)
    • Android SDK at /Users/mario/Library/Android/sdk
    • Android NDK location not configured (optional; useful for native profiling support)
    • Platform android-28, build-tools 28.0.3
    • Java binary at: /Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/jre/jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java
    • Java version OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_152-release-1248-b01)
    • All Android licenses accepted.

[✓] iOS toolchain - develop for iOS devices (Xcode 10.2)
    • Xcode at /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
    • Xcode 10.2, Build version 10E125
    • ios-deploy 1.9.4
    • CocoaPods version 1.6.1

[✓] Android Studio (version 3.3)
    • Android Studio at /Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents
    • Flutter plugin version 34.0.1
    • Dart plugin version 182.5215
    • Java version OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_152-release-1248-b01)

[✓] VS Code (version 1.35.1)
    • VS Code at /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents
    • Flutter extension version 3.1.0

[✓] Connected device (1 available)
    • iPhone 5s • 22C55890-748A-43E5-A991-563B622B2C39 • ios • com.apple.CoreSimulator.SimRuntime.iOS-12-2 (simulator)

• No issues found!

[tareq594]

have the same critical issue even with the emulator

[deven98]

Same issue with our app. RAM usage goes above a GB over time.

[DennisKragekjaer]

Same issue here, while using the map memory just keeps rising, at some point the map freezes. I have been struggling with this, and it makes me doubt about the Flutter concept.

[eseidelGoogle]

@amirh would know how to route this.

[amirh]

@iskakaushik

[deven98]

Any rough ETA of a fix on this? This is main block for us from going into prod.

[deven98]

Just as an addition, this seems to be on both platforms, not just iOS. For us, it is taking up more memory by the minute and then rebooting some Android phones completely, whereas iOS shuts the app down once it goes above a certain value. We rechecked for any recursive code that might be causing this same bug as well. We also removed maps to confirm and it does not seem to be happening anymore.

[eseidelGoogle]

It looks like this is assigned, but not scheduled.

Do we have a reduction/example we could offer the team? Or does any usage of maps produce this? Thanks.

[deven98]

@eseidel Any implementation of maps causes this for us currently. Another flavor of the app without the map works perfectly without memory issues.

[eseidelGoogle]

@iskakaushik has been busy with other work the last month or more. We should probably un-assign this and find a new owner.

[adar2378]

I'm also having the same problem, map never releases the allocated memory

[kattaliraees]

Any update on this memory leak issue for google map flutter plugin in iOS devices? This is affecting our production release plan

[server2245]

Same issue here.

[deven98]

To anyone who has this as blocker: I'd recommend temporarily replacing Google maps with the mapbox implementation - https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_map

[boominadhaprakash]

Facing same memory leak issue in iOS devices.

[boominadhaprakash]

To anyone who has this as blocker: I'd recommend temporarily replacing Google maps with the mapbox implementation - https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_map

Hi @deven98
Thanks for your suggestion. Will it support, Polylines, Markers, Circles for both iOS and Android?

[deven98]

@boominadhaprakash Tbh, we just needed markers for our app, but I did see code in the package for pretty much everything you mentioned, so do check it out. Solved our use cases.

[boominadhaprakash]

@deven98 Okay, thank you. I will check.

[s2bhilai]

is anyone working on this critical issue?

[adar2378]

I was also wondering if anyone's working on this? Our iOS app crashes after using for couple of minutes because of this memory leak

[Elvis5566]

same here...

[kattaliraees]

is this an issue with google maps plugin or flutter platform views? dealloc is getting called for the FLTGoogleMapController Obc class. I tried to clear map. Tried below but no luck

-(void)dealloc {

  NSLog(@"FLTGoogleMapController dealloc");
  [_mapView clear];
  _mapView.delegate = nil;
  _mapView = nil;
  _markersController = nil;
  _polygonsController = nil;
  _polylinesController = nil;
  _circlesController = nil;
  _registrar = nil;
}

Below code change in GoogleMapController.m reduced memory leak. we have 2 map screens, switching them 5-7 times made the app crash before, now it take 50+

GoogleMapController.zip

- (NSObject<FlutterPlatformView>*)createWithFrame:(CGRect)frame
                                   viewIdentifier:(int64_t)viewId
                                        arguments:(id _Nullable)args {

    static FLTGoogleMapController *fltVC = nil;

    if(fltVC) {
      [fltVC clearMapData];
      
      [fltVC addMarkersController:args];
      [fltVC addPolygonsController:args];
      [fltVC addPolylinesController:args];
      [fltVC addCirclesController:args];
    
    
    }
    static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
    dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
        fltVC = [[FLTGoogleMapController alloc] initWithFrame:frame
                                        viewIdentifier:viewId
                                             arguments:args
                                             registrar:_registrar];
    });

  return fltVC;

  /*return [[FLTGoogleMapController alloc] initWithFrame:frame
                                        viewIdentifier:viewId
                                             arguments:args
                                             registrar:_registrar];*/
}

[kattaliraees]

@adar2378 Replace below files in the plugin folder
lib/src/controller.dart
lib/ios/Classes/GoogleMapController.h
lib/ios/Classes/GoogleMapController.m

GoogleMapController.zip

Added clearMapView(); API in controller.dart. Call it before you switch to different map view

@override
  void dispose() {

    mapController.clearMapView();
 
    super.dispose();
  }

[ricristian]

@kattaliraees is there any chance to add this fix directly in the package and the rest of users just update it directly from pubspec.yml ? Either the way many thanks for this solution
@eseidelGoogle

[kattaliraees]

@durduliu2009 we cannot consider this as an actual fix. This is a temporary workaround to reduce the quantity of memory getting leaked. Also not sure if this have any impact on anywhere else. But it works fine for our scenario. We are keeping an entire copy of plugin folder within our source code repository and referring to that in pubspec.yaml

  google_maps_flutter:
    path: ./lib/google_maps_flutter-0.5.21+11

[adar2378]

@adar2378 Replace below files in the plugin folder
lib/src/controller.dart
lib/ios/Classes/GoogleMapController.h
lib/ios/Classes/GoogleMapController.m

GoogleMapController.zip

Added clearMapView(); API in controller.dart. Call it before you switch to different map view

@override
  void dispose() {

    mapController.clearMapView();
 
    super.dispose();
  }

Thank you so much :)

[BorisLok]

This change work for me. but it is not totally release all memory that map alloc, but it can release most.

Below code change in GoogleMapController.m

- (void) dealloc {
    NSLog(@"google map dealloc!!");
    [_mapView clear];
    [_mapView removeFromSuperview];
    _mapView.frame = CGRectZero;
    _mapView.delegate = nil;
    _mapView = nil;
    _markersController = nil;
    _polylinesController = nil;
    _polygonsController = nil;
    _circlesController = nil;
    _registrar = nil;
    [_channel setMethodCallHandler:nil];
    _channel = nil;
    _registrar = nil;
}

[ricristian]

@adar2378 Replace below files in the plugin folder
lib/src/controller.dart
lib/ios/Classes/GoogleMapController.h
lib/ios/Classes/GoogleMapController.m

GoogleMapController.zip

Added clearMapView(); API in controller.dart. Call it before you switch to different map view

@override
  void dispose() {

    mapController.clearMapView();
 
    super.dispose();
  }

I've tried it and I receive a message in debug console (tried meaning: copy google maps plugin into my local folder lib .. in that new folder from lib I've replaced files from the archive )

 Caught error: MissingPluginException(No implementation found for method map#clearMapView on channel plugins.flutter.io/google_maps_1)

pubspec.yml

dependencies:
  flutter:
    sdk: flutter

  flutter_localizations:
    sdk: flutter

  google_maps_flutter:
    path: ./lib/google_maps_flutter-0.5.21+15
  requests: ^2.0.1
  logger: ^0.7.0+2
  ....

[kattaliraees]

@durduliu2009 the clearMapView platform method is only added for iOS. So if you try to call it from the android build, it will give you the error. If the platform is android, don't call the clearMapView API. If you getting the error from the iOS build, try to clean and build and also make sure the files are replaced

[kattaliraees]

Also, remove the example folder from the plugin folder

[ricristian]

@durduliu2009 the clearMapView platform method is only added for iOS. So if you try to call it from the android build, it will give you the error. If the platform is android, don't call the clearMapView API. If you getting the error from the iOS build, try to clean and build and also make sure the files are replaced

I'm running this for android. So for android there is still memory leak and just for iOS exist that small workaround ? Many thanks in advance

[adar2378]

I didn't find the memory leak on android though. @durduliu2009

[cyanglaz]

flutter/engine#14326
flutter/engine#14275
These 2 PRs have been merged in recently which partially fix the issue. I tested with the Flutter on master and it seems the leak has reduced.

[cyanglaz]

@kattaliraees @darkmarthur Do you still experience a huge amount of leaks using flutter on master?

[kattaliraees]

@cyanglaz switching between 2 maps screens 10 times in iOS Simulator. On-device it will crash once it crosses 1GB

[cyanglaz]

@kattaliraees I also saw the big memory leak on simulator, but on real device, it seems to be better. Have you checked it on real devices?

[kattaliraees]

@cyanglaz Currently don't have a device with me. But will check and let you know soon

[kattaliraees]

@cyanglaz I can confirm that there is no memory leak on iOS Devices (verified on iPad 5th Gen iOS 13.3). It never crossed more than 450MB. Cheers 👏

[adar2378]

So we need to update to the latest version of flutter for this fix?

[kattaliraees]

@adar2378 The fix is not available in stable channel(which is the default). You have to switch to the master channel by running below

flutter channel master

[cyanglaz]

@kattaliraees Thanks for confirming. I am going to close this issue since the original post is about leaking in the real device. @darkmarthur please reply if you found the issue not fixed and we can reopen and take a look again.

[harrypatel07]

@cyanglaz so do I need to change the channel from stable to master to resolved this memory issue?

[efraespada]

flutter channel master worked for me 👍

[lock]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. If you are still experiencing a similar issue, please open a new bug, including the output of flutter doctor -v and a minimal reproduction of the issue.