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Quick tips to improve WPF app memory footprint.

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We sometimes hear concerns that WPF applications memory foot print is too large.

This could be because of many reasons, but a common reason is that the application simply contains large number of elements in its visual tree. Very large tree will increase memory consumption and cause severe sluggishness.

Very often the root cause is that Virtualization got turned off. As you know Virtualization is on by default in WPF ListBox & ListView controls, but certain conditions can turn it off (see conditions below) even if you did not intent to!

Another possible cause is that the application uses rich templates that can quickly causes elements count to grow.

A good tool that can help you isolate these kinds of issues is Snoop.

In the image below, you can see that the app is using the Virtualizes Stack panel, however you can see that the ListBox contains thousand of elements, not as expected.

Snoop 

Snoop allows you to quickly filter properties, so if you type "IsGr" in the Property Filter box,  you can see that the IsGrouping property is checked. In this example , the the application turned Grouping on, which causes Virtualization to be turned off.

image

In summary:

  • Use Snoop to watch if your application has too many elements.
  • Check if number of elements grew because of your templates and optimize those if possible.
  • Watch for below conditions that may turn virtualization off in ListBox/ListView:
    1. Make sure ScrollViewer.CanContentScroll=True
    2. Make sure VirtualizingStackPanel.IsVirtualizing=True
    3. Avoid Grouping
    4. Keep VirtualizingStackPanel as your default panel …or write own virtualized panel. A good example is the Virtual Canvas described here.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2008
    PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/03/25/quick-tips-to-improve-wpf-app-memory-footprint/

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2008
    Возможности WPF по виртуализации визуального дерева вашего интерфейса.

  • Anonymous
    April 23, 2008
    Știați că în WPF: un buton poate conține un meniu ale cărui menu item-s pot c

  • Anonymous
    June 11, 2008
    Snoop はWPFアプリケーションのVisualツリーを確認できるツールです。特に多数の要素によってメモリーが消費されていないかどうかを確認する場合などに有効です。 WPF Performanceのブログ

  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2008
    If you could do your grouping in the ViewModel, then wouldn't this prevent virtualization from being turned off? It seems to me that the problem is that ItemsControl is effectively creating its own backing store when IsGrouping is set to true, rather than having the ItemsSource be the backing store. Architecturally, do you think this could be something that can be fixed without creating new controls?