CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosinstruments
Max Phillips
Max Phillips

Reputation: 7489

What is considered high memory usage in an iOS app?

When profiling I'm unsure as to what is considered high memory usage relative to other applications on iOS. The application I'm testing runs between 18-26mb memory in the Instruments activity monitor. Is this low, medium, high, etc.?

I'm profiling on iPhone 6s and iPhone 5c, not simulators.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1722

Answers (1)

gnasher729
gnasher729

Reputation: 52538

The iPhone 5 has 1GB RAM, the iPhone 4s has 512 MB. iPad 3 had 1GB, iPad 2 has 512MB. Obviously you can't use all of that. You should most definitely not go over 600 MB on the newer devices or over 300 MB on the older devices. Good news: You are far, far below that.

Where high memory usage really hurts: Say you use 600MB on an iPhone 5. Then all other apps that are in RAM can only use 400MB between them. If your app is in the foreground, background apps will be killed, and when the user switches to those apps, they take longer to switch to because they need to be restarted. But if your app goes to the background, it's likely to be killed quickly because it uses so much RAM. And if the user switches to it, starting the app will take long because it uses so much RAM.

As I said, your 18-26 MB is absolutely fine. The user could run 40 apps like that simultaneously on an iPhone 5, or 20 apps on an iPhone 4s.

Upvotes: 3

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