Low Memory Warning (Red Band On Bottom)

[Fissure]

So I started using iCabMobile as an alternative Internet browser. So far in many ways it's better than Safari. I did notice however that after having 3-4 tabs open in the browser I usually get a Red Slim Band across the bottom of the iPad screen that says "Low Memory".

Is this coming from the app or the iPad?

I'm sure the multiple tabs are eating up system memory.

 

[elmo151]

So I started using iCabMobile as an alternative Internet browser. So far in many ways it's better than Safari. I did notice however that after having 3-4 tabs open in the browser I usually get a Red Slim Band across the bottom of the iPad screen that says "Low Memory".

Is this coming from the app or the iPad?

I'm sure the multiple tabs are eating up system memory.

both. Icab may have memory leaks and pad will warn you

 

[EssentialParado]

The warning is a feature of iCab. When you have enough tabs open it can crash the app, so the warning let's you know to close a few tabs. Have a look in the main settings menu and look under iCab's app and it gives a few options about low memory: you can have it automatically close tabs for you (it doesn't close them, rather needs to reload the tab when you go back to it, like Safari does), close tabs only in critical situations, and you can remove that warning banner altogether. I chose to remove it because it shows too often for me!

 

[Mitchrapp]

Is that new? I've only started getting the warning the past few weeks. Coincidently since I've had 4.2 beta.

 

[PatrickCocoa]

Let's Go!

. . . the warning let's you know

Should be:

. . . the warning lets you know.

 

[EssentialParado]

Should be:

. . . the warning lets you know.

Yep! Auto-correct strikes again!

It's worst when I'm not doing so good, and I end up feeling I'll.

 

[JulianL]

Yes, it's new. It was in the list of what's new in the last release. There are two options you can have for low memory conditions, this red warning bar can be enabled or disabled and you can set iCab to automatically free tabs under low memory conditions.

The red bar appearing doesn't necessarily mean that there are memory leaks in iCab but it is intended to show when you're being a bit overambitious with how many open tabs you have so that you can manually close some. If you ignore this warning then I believe that iCab will often crash but I also believe this is true of Atomic if you just push it too far. I think the intention of the iCab author is probably to give the user the choice, switch on the option to automatically free tabs if you want to stay safe but if you're happy to take responsibility then use the warning bar so you know that none of your open tabs will get flushed out of memory automatically by iCab due to low memory conditions.

I haven't tried the option to automatically free tabs. Is anyone running the latest iCab with the automatic memory reclamation feature set? Does it delete your oldest tabs completely or does it just free the memory associated with having them cached in RAM? If it just deletes the cache and not the tab itself then, when you switch back to an old (memory reclaimed) tab, do they seem to be a complete refresh from the web site or do they seem quicker than that, i.e. possibly reloading from the flash indicating that iCab didn't delete the RAM cache completely but copied it to flash storage instead? I might ask the developer but if anyone knows already then I don't want to waste his time.

By the way, some iCab options that need iCab to be restarted aren't in the in-app settings, they are set using the general iOS Settings app; the memory options are of this type.

- Julian

 

[EssentialParado]

I haven't tried the option to automatically free tabs. Is anyone running the latest iCab with the automatic memory reclamation feature set? Does it delete your oldest tabs completely or does it just free the memory associated with having them cached in RAM? If it just deletes the cache and not the tab itself then, when you switch back to an old (memory reclaimed) tab, do they seem to be a complete refresh from the web site or do they seem quicker than that, i.e. possibly reloading from the flash indicating that iCab didn't delete the RAM cache completely but copied it to flash storage instead? I might ask the developer but if anyone knows already then I don't want to waste his time.

I tried the 'free tabs under critical conditions' option first and it worked well - if you've got enough tabs open, which would have crashed the old version of iCab, it will now slow down for a few moments (probably to free some memory) then go back to running smoothly again. Word of warning though, if this happens and you keep slamming it with new tabs and don't give it a chance to catch up, it can still crash.

I then tried out the 'always free tabs' option, but I was very disappointed - it seems to only allow one or two tabs and will kill all the others, which require a refresh when you go back go them. I can't remember if it needs a full refresh or if it grabs the cache from memory, but either way is unacceptably slow. So I quickly went back to the 'only under critical situations' option. It's not as stable, and does still crash the occasional time, but it seems a nice compromise between unlimited yet unstable vs stable yet limited.

What I really want to see is a browser with a completely rock-solid anti-crash function or preferably, even built into iOS. It's too often i'll be writing a long blog or forum post then the browser crashes and I lose it all. It shouldn't be a necessity to highlight and copy my text every few minutes in the case it crashes.