How to increase heap size of an android application

Question

I am writing an Android application which uses several 3D models  Such a model with textures can take up a lot of memory  I found out the manufacturer sets a limit on the heap size an application can use  For example my tablet Samsung Galaxy Tab 8 9 P7310 can take up 64MB of memory   Is there a way to increase this size of memory an application can use

User · Answer

This can be done by two ways according to your Android OS.

You can use android:largeHeap="true" in application tag of Android manifest to request a larger heap size, but this will not work on any pre Honeycomb devices.
On pre 2.3 devices, you can use the VMRuntime class, but this will not work on Gingerbread and above See below how to do it.

VMRuntime.getRuntime().setMinimumHeapSize(BIGGER_SIZE);

Before Setting HeapSize make sure that you have entered the appropriate size which will not affect other application or OS functionality. Before settings just check how much size your app takes & then set the size just to fulfill your job. Dont use so much of memory otherwise other apps might affect.

Reference: http://dwij.co.in/increase-heap-size-of-android-application

User · Answer

You can use android largeHeap  true  to request a larger heap size  but this will not work on any pre Honeycomb devices  On pre 2 3 devices  you can use the VMRuntime class  but this will not work on Gingerbread and above   The only way to have as large a limit as possible is to do memory intensive tasks via the NDK  as the NDK does not impose memory limits like the SDK   Alternatively  you could only load the part of the model that is currently in view  and load the rest as you need it  while removing the unused parts from memory  However  this may not be possible  depending on your app

User · Answer

you can t increase the heap size dynamically   you can request to use more by using android largeHeap  true  in the manifest   also  you can use native memory  NDK  amp  JNI    so you actually bypass the heap size limitation    here are some posts i ve made about it    How to cache bitmaps into native memory JNI bitmap operations   for helping to avoid OOM when using large images   and here s a library i ve made for it    https   github com AndroidDeveloperLB AndroidJniBitmapOperations

User · Answer

From what I remember you could use VMRuntime class in early Android versions but now you just can t anymore   I don t think letting the developer choose the heap size in a mobile environment can be considered so safe though  I think it s easier that you can find a way to modify the heap size in a specific device  not on the programming side  that by trying to modify it from the application itself

User · Answer

Increasing Java Heap unfairly eats deficit mobile resurces  Sometimes it is sufficient to just wait for garbage collector and then resume your operations after heap space is reduced  Use this static method then

User · Answer

Use second process  Declare at AndroidManifest new Service with   android process   second    Exchange between first and second process over BroadcastReceiver

User · Answer

Is there a way to increase this size of memory an application can use    Applications running on API Level 11  can have android largeHeap  true  on the  lt application gt  element in the manifest to request a larger-than-normal heap size  and getLargeMemoryClass   on ActivityManager will tell you how big that heap is  However    This only works on API Level 11   i e   Honeycomb and beyond  There is no guarantee how large the large heap will be The user will perceive your large-heap request  because it will force their other apps out of RAM terminate other apps  processes to free up system RAM for use by your large heap Because of  3  and the fact that I expect that android largeHeap will be abused  support for this may be abandoned in the future  or the user may be warned about this at install time  e g   you will need to request a special permission for it  Presently  this feature is lightly documented

[android] How to increase heap size of an android application?

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