OutOfMemory exception when loading bitmap from external storage

I tried all the approaches mentioned here & at other resources but I came to the inference that setting ImageView's reference to null will solve the issue:

  public Bitmap getimage(String path ,ImageView iv)
   {
    //iv is passed to set it null to remove it from external memory
    iv=null;
    InputStream stream = new FileInputStream("/mnt/sdcard/mydata/" + path);
    Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(stream, null, null);
    stream.close();
    stream=null;
    return bitmap;
    }

& you are done!

Note:Though it may solve above problem but I would suggest you to check Tom van Zummeren 's optimized image loading.

And also check SoftReference: All SoftReferences pointing to softly reachable objects are guaranteed to be cleared before the VM will throw an OutOfMemoryError.

• When doing a lot with bitmaps, don't debug the app - just run it. The debugger will leave memory leaks.
• Bitmaps are very expensive. If possible, scale them down on load by creating BitmapFactory.Options and setting inSampleSize to >1.

EDIT: Also, be sure to check your app for memory leaks. Leaking a Bitmap (having static Bitmaps is an excellent way to do that) will quickly exhaust your available memory.

This is a fairly common issue which all of us face while loading images from the sdcard.

The solution as I found was to use inJustDecodeBounds first while loading the image using decodeFileDescriptor . That would not actually decode the image, but give the image size. Now I can scale it appropriately(using the options) so as to resize the image for the display area. Its needed because low memory on the phone can be easily taken over by your 5MP image. This I believe is the most elegant solution.

There are two issues here....

• Bitmap memory isn't in the VM heap but rather in the native heap - see BitmapFactory OOM driving me nuts
• Garbage collection for the native heap is lazier than the VM heap - so you need to be quite aggressive about doing bitmap.recycle and bitmap =null every time you go through an Activity's onPause or onDestroy

Instead of loading it from the SD Card directly, why not move the image to the cache in the phone's internal storage using getCacheDir() or use a temp directory to store the images in?

See this, this on external memory usage. Also, this article may be of relevance to you.

Use the below code and you will never get the following error: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: bitmap size exceeds VM budget

              BitmapFactory.Options bounds = new BitmapFactory.Options();

              bounds.inSampleSize = 4;

              myBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(imgFile.getAbsolutePath(), bounds);

              picturesView.setImageBitmap(myBitmap);

The best solution i found and edited according to my need

public static Bitmap getImageBitmap(String path) throws IOException{
        // Allocate files and objects outside of timingoops             
        File file = new File(thumbpath);        
        RandomAccessFile in = new RandomAccessFile(file, "rws");
        final FileChannel channel = in.getChannel();
        final int fileSize = (int)channel.size();
        final byte[] testBytes = new byte[fileSize];
        final ByteBuffer buff = ByteBuffer.allocate(fileSize);
        final byte[] buffArray = buff.array();
        @SuppressWarnings("unused")
        final int buffBase = buff.arrayOffset();

        // Read from channel into buffer, and batch read from buffer to byte array;
        long time1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
        channel.position(0);
        channel.read(buff);
        buff.flip();
        buff.get(testBytes);
        long time1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
        Bitmap bmp = Bitmap_process(buffArray);
        long time2 = System.currentTimeMillis();        
        System.out.println("Time taken to load: " + (time2 - time1) + "ms");

        return bmp;
    }

    public static Bitmap Bitmap_process(byte[] buffArray){
        BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();

        options.inDither=false;                     //Disable Dithering mode
        options.inPurgeable=true;                   //Tell to gc that whether it needs free memory, the Bitmap can be cleared
        options.inInputShareable=true;              //Which kind of reference will be used to recover the Bitmap data after being clear, when it will be used in the future
        options.inTempStorage=new byte[32 * 1024];  //Allocate some temporal memory for decoding

        options.inSampleSize=1;

        Bitmap imageBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(buffArray, 0, buffArray.length, options);
        return imageBitmap;
    }

Thanks to all the threads, I've found a solution that works for me on a real device. The tricks are all about using

BitmapFactory.Options opts=new BitmapFactory.Options();
opts.inSampleSize=(int)(target_size/bitmap_size); //if original bitmap is bigger

But for me this was not enough. My original image (taken from the Camera app) was 3264x2448. The correct ratio for me was 3, since i wanted a plain VGA image of 1024x768.

But setting inSampleSize to 3 was not enough: still out of memory exception. So in the end I opted for a iterative approach: I start from the computed correct size, and increase it until I stop having a OOM exception. For me it was at sample of 4.

// Decode with inSampleSize
BitmapFactory.Options o2 = new BitmapFactory.Options();
// o2.inSampleSize = scale;
float trueScale = o.outWidth / 1024;
o2.inPurgeable = true;
o2.inDither = false;
Bitmap b = null;
do {
     o2.inSampleSize = (int) trueScale;
     Log.d(TAG, "Scale is " + trueScale);
 try {
    b = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(new FileInputStream(f), null, o2);
    } catch (OutOfMemoryError e) {
        Log.e(TAG,"Error decoding image at sampling "+trueScale+", resampling.."+e);
        System.gc();
    try {
        Thread.sleep(50);
     } catch (InterruptedException e1) { 
         e1.printStackTrace();
     }
}
    trueScale += 1;
} while (b==null && trueScale < 10);
return b;

You must not depends on the GC to recycle your bitmap memory. You must clearly recycle the bitmap when it is not needed.

See the Bitmap method:

void recycle() Free up the memory associated with this bitmap's pixels, and mark the bitmap as "dead", meaning it will throw an exception if getPixels() or setPixels() is called, and will draw nothing.

Try this another way...

Bitmap bmpOrignal = BitmapFactory.decodeFile("/sdcard/mydata/" + path");

Allows inSampleSize resize the final read image. getLength() of AssetFileDescriptor allows get size of file.

You can vary inSampleSize according to getLength() to prevent OutOfMemory like this :

private final int MAX_SIZE = 500000;

public Bitmap readBitmap(Uri selectedImage)
{
    Bitmap bm = null;
    AssetFileDescriptor fileDescriptor = null;
    try
    {
        fileDescriptor = this.getContentResolver().openAssetFileDescriptor(selectedImage,"r");
        long size = fileDescriptor.getLength();
        BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
        options.inSampleSize = (int) (size / MAX_SIZE);
        bm = BitmapFactory.decodeFileDescriptor(fileDescriptor.getFileDescriptor(), null, options);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    finally
    {
        try {
            if(fileDescriptor != null) fileDescriptor.close();
        } catch (IOException e) {}
    }
    return bm;
}