Android studio takes too much memory - performance

Question

I had installed Android Studio 1.0 RC 2. I have 4GB of RAM installed, but after starting Android Studio and launching Android Emulator, more than 90% of physical memory has been used by only these two. Is there is any way to reduce this memory use? Due to this memory issue, I can't open other applications at the same time.

Answer 1

I'm currently running Android Studio on Windows 8.1 machine with 6 gigs of RAM.
I found that disabling VCS in android studio and using an external program to handle VCS helped a lot. You can disable VCS by going to File->Settings->Plugins and disable the following:
CVS Integration
Git Integration
GitHub
Google Cloud Testing
Google Cloud Tools Core
Google Cloud Tools for Android Studio
hg4idea
Subversion Integration
Mercurial Integration
TestNG-J

Answer 2

In my case, there were two main sources of memory hogging: the IDE and Gradle:
Android Studio (up to 1.5GB)
The IDE's JVM is configured to have a max heap size. You can see this in the lower-right corner of the main interface:
You can reduce this by editing the memory-related settings in the .vmoptions file. For example, I changed my max heap size to 512MB:
-Xmx512m
Unfortunately, I found that lowering this value increases the frequency of Android Studio temporarily freezing, perhaps to do its garbage collection.
Gradle (up to 1.5GB)
Gradle can also use a lot of RAM after developing for a while. Windows just shows it as Java(TM) Platform SE Binary:
You can fix this by changing the Gradle JVM options. You can do this on a per-user basis by editing gradle.properties:
Open the gradle.properties file, creating it if it doesn't exist:
Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.gradle\gradle.properties
Linux/Mac: ~/.gradle/gradle.properties
Update the org.gradle.jvmargs property, creating it if necessary. I set mine to this:
org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx256m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8
I haven't noticed any difference in build performance for my small project with the max heap size set to 256MB (-Xmx256m).
Note that you might need to restart Android Studio so the old Gradle process is killed; otherwise you might end up with both running at the same time.
Emulator
Regarding the emulator taking up a lot of your RAM, your screenshot shows it taking about 800MB. You can choose how much RAM to allocate to the emulator:
Edit the AVD
Press Show Advanced Settings
Reduce the value of RAM

Answer 3

You can speed up your Eclipse or Android Studio work, you just follow these:
Use/open single project at a time
clean your project after running your app in emulator every time
use mobile/external device instead of emulator
don't close emulator after using once, use same emulator for running app each time
Disable VCS by using File->Settings->Plugins and disable the following things :
1.CVS Integration
2.Git Integration
3.GitHub
4.Google Cloud Tools for Android Studio
5.Subversion Integration
I am also using Android Studio with 4-GB installed main memory but following these statements really boost my Android Studio performance.

Answer 4

Android Studio has recently published an official guide for low-memory machines: Guide
If you are running Android Studio on a machine with less than the recommended specifications (see System Requirements), you can customize the IDE to improve performance on your machine, as follows:
Reduce the maximum heap size available to Android Studio: Reduce the maximum heap size for Android Studio to 512Mb.
Update Gradle and the Android plugin for Gradle: Update to the latest versions of Gradle and the Android plugin for Gradle to ensure you are taking advantage of the latest improvements for performance.
Enable Power Save Mode: Enabling Power Save Mode turns off a number of memory- and battery-intensive background operations, including error highlighting and on-the-fly inspections, autopopup code completion, and automatic incremental background compilation. To turn on Power Save Mode, click File > Power Save Mode.
Disable unnecessary lint checks: To change which lint checks Android Studio runs on your code, proceed as follows:
Click File > Settings (on a Mac, Android Studio > Preferences) to open the Settings dialog.In the left pane, expand the Editor section and click Inspections. Click the checkboxes to select or deselect lint checks as appropriate for your project. Click Apply or OK to save your changes.
Debug on a physical device: Debugging on an emulator uses more memory than debugging on a physical device, so you can improve overall performance for Android Studio by debugging on a physical device.
Include only necessary Google Play Services as dependencies: Including Google Play Services as dependencies in your project increases the amount of memory necessary. Only include necessary dependencies to improve memory usage and performance. For more information, see Add Google Play Services to Your Project.
Reduce the maximum heap size available for DEX file compilation: Set the javaMaxHeapSize for DEX file compilation to 200m. For more information, see Improve build times by configuring DEX resources.
Do not enable parallel compilation: Android Studio can compile independent modules in parallel, but if you have a low-memory system you should not turn on this feature. To check this setting, proceed as follows:
Click File > Settings (on a Mac, Android Studio > Preferences) to open the Settings dialog. In the left pane, expand Build, Execution, Deployment and then click Compiler. Ensure that the Compile independent modules in parallel option is unchecked.If you have made a change, click Apply or OK for your change to take effect.
Turn on Offline Mode for Gradle: If you have limited bandwitch, turn on Offline Mode to prevent Gradle from attempting to download missing dependencies during your build. When Offline Mode is on, Gradle will issue a build failure if you are missing any dependencies, instead of attempting to download them. To turn on Offline Mode, proceed as follows:
Click File > Settings (on a Mac, Android Studio > Preferences) to
open the Settings dialog.
In the left pane, expand Build, Execution, Deployment and then click Gradle.
Under Global Gradle settings, check the Offline work checkbox.
Click Apply or OK for your changes to take effect.

Answer 5

I have used all of Sam's recommendations above, but I found that the VM command line options are no longer supported as described. (I received an error when used)
As an alternative, I was able to reduce gradle dramatically by adding the following line to the "gradle.properties" file
org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xms512m -Xmx1024m
As of A.S. ver 1.3, the file is located in the same folder level as "gradle.build".
The above configuration is a "memory stack" of 512 meg, and "memory heap" of 1024 meg.
I tested this on a small project, using settings where both memory sizes were set to 256 meg. It limited the JVM sizes as expected. In all my tests, I restarted A.S. to force the JVM to restart.
Hopefully, this will save others dealing with this issue from getting those "Get yourself a better computer" responses. :-)

Answer 6

To run Android envirorment on low configuration machine.
Close the uncessesory web tabs in browser
For Antivirus users, exclude the build folder which is auto generated
Android studio have 1.2 Gb default heap can decrease to 512 MB
Help > Edit custom VM options
studio.vmoptions
-Xmx512m
Layouts performace will be speed up
For Gradle one of the core component in Android studio Mkae sure
like right now 3.0beta is latest one
Below tips can affect the code quality so please use with cautions:
Studio contain Power safe Mode when turned on it will close background operations that lint , code complelitions and so on.
You can run manually lint check when needed ./gradlew lint
Most of are using Android emulators on average it consume 2 GB RAM so if possible use actual Android device these will reduce your resource load on your computer. Alternatively you can reduce the RAM of the emulator and it will automatically reduce the virtual memory consumption on your computer. you can find this in virtual device configuration and advance setting.
Gradle offline mode is a feature for bandwidth limited users to disable the downloading of build dependencies. It will reduce the background operation that will help to increase the performance of Android studio.
Android studio offers an optimization to compile multiple modules in parallel. On low RAM machines this feature will likely have a negative impact on the performance. You can disable it in the compiler settings dialog.

Answer 7

You can adjust the heap size of the IDE and Gradle daemons from inside the Android Studio.
Read and follow the instructions in the settings screen:
Also, see this page on Android Developers site

Answer 8

I have Android Studio 2.1.1 Bro use genymotion emulator It Faster If Use Android Marshmallow. And My Ram Is 4gb.And Install Plugin for genymotion in Android Studio.You Will see good result in instead of wasting time start android emualtor it will take 5 min.genymotion 10 to 20 second speed and faster so I recommended to you use genymotion.

Answer 9

To reduce the lag i would recommend the follwing steps
my pc specs : 2 gb ram, processor: intel core2 duo
first kill all background process, if you have server or database running you could stop them first with following commands
sudo service apache2 stop
sudo service mysql stop
Then enable power saving mode in android studio by file>powersaving mode
It could disable background process, and then studio appears to go well

Answer 10

Try switching your JVM to eclipse openj9. Its gonna use way less memory. I swapped it and its using 600Mb constantly.

Answer 11

I don't know if it is a solution but Invalidate Cache and Restart solved this problem in my case. I am currently using Android Studio 3.6

Answer 12

I fond this YouTube video from Google where are some tips and tricks for it. The video also includes advantages and disadvantages of suggested changes.
Improving Android Studio Performance on Memory-Constrained Machines

Answer 13

Open below mention path on your system and delete all your avd's (Virtual devices: Emulator)
C:\Users{Username}.android\avd
Note: - Deleting Emulator only from android studio will not delete all the spaces grab by their avd's. So delete all avd's from above given path and then create new emulator, if you needed.