Debugging and Fixing Memory Leaks in JavaScript: A Definitive Guide

Learn how to debug and fix memory leaks in Javascript

Hello everyone, welcome back to another article on Javascript optimisations. In this, we will learn how to handle memory leaks in JavaScript.

Briefly, we are going to cover the following topics:

• First, we will understand what are memory leaks in JS
• Then learn how the internal garbage collector works in JS
• Learn about common reasons for memory leaks in JS one of which is itself a popular interview question. Also, we will check solutions for such memory leaks in JavaScript
• Then we will check for memory leaks in the Chrome developer console
• Finally we learn how to fix memory leaks during API calls first in Javascript and then in a react project

So let’s begin…

Memory leaks in JavaScript

Technical explanation

A memory leak occurs when an application retains memory that is no longer needed, leading to increased memory usage over time. Since memory which could be allocated to currently important tasks remains allocated to older unneeded tasks memory utilisation of the system goes on piling up. In JavaScript, memory is managed automatically by the garbage collector, which frees up memory that…