Fixing memory leaks in the browser

In my experience, the most common sources of memory leaks are APIs like these:

• addEventListener. This is the most common one. Call removeEventListener to clean it up.
• setTimeout / setInterval. If you create a recurring timer (e.g. to run every 30 seconds), then you need to clean it up with clearTimeout or clearInterval. (setTimeout can leak if it’s used like setInterval – i.e., scheduling a new setTimeout inside of the setTimeout callback.)
• IntersectionObserver, ResizeObserver, MutationObserver, etc. These new-ish APIs are very convenient, but they are also likely to leak. If you create one inside of a component, and it’s attached to a globally-available element, then you need to call disconnect() to clean them up. (Note that DOM nodes which are garbage-collected will have their listeners and observers garbage-collected as well. So typically, you only need to worry about global elements, e.g. the , the document, an omnipresent header/footer element, etc.)
• Promises, Observables, EventEmitters, etc. Any programming model where you’re setting up a listener can leak memory if you forget to stop listening. (A Promise can leak if it’s never resolved or rejected, in which case any .then() callbacks attached to it will leak.)
• Global object stores. With something like Redux the state is global, so if you’re not careful, you can just keep appending memory to it and it will never get cleaned up.
• Infinite DOM growth. If you implement an infinite scrolling list without virtualization, then the number of DOM nodes will grow without bound.

The article also outlines how you can use the chrome developer tools to finde memory leaks.