Why is this Java program taking up so much memory?

Question

I have a small piece of code that takes a screenshot of my desktop every five minutes. However I'm a little confused by the amount of memory it takes up - often it will creep up to 200mb of RAM, which I'm sure is excessive... Can anyone tell me a) sensible ways to reduce the memory footprint or b) why it's going up at all?

/**
 * Code modified from code given in http://whileonefork.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/java-multi-monitor-screenshots.html following a SE question at  
 * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10042086/screen-capture-in-java-not-capturing-whole-screen and then modified by a code review at http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/10783/java-screengrab
 */
package com.tmc.personal;

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.GraphicsDevice;
import java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.TimeZone;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

class ScreenCapture {

    static int minsBetweenScreenshots = 5;

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        int indexOfPicture = 1000;// should be only used for naming file...
        while (true) {
            takeScreenshot("ScreenCapture" + indexOfPicture++);
            try {
                TimeUnit.MINUTES.sleep(minsBetweenScreenshots);
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }

    //from http://www.coderanch.com/t/409980/java/java/append-file-timestamp
    private  final static String getDateTime()
    {
        DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd_hh:mm:ss");
        df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("PST"));
        return df.format(new Date());
    }

    public static void takeScreenshot(String filename) {
        Rectangle allScreenBounds = getAllScreenBounds();
        Robot robot;
        try {
            robot = new Robot();
            BufferedImage screenShot = robot.createScreenCapture(allScreenBounds);
            ImageIO.write(screenShot, "jpg", new File(filename + getDateTime()+ ".jpg"));
        } catch (AWTException e) {
            System.err.println("Something went wrong starting the robot");
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            System.err.println("Something went wrong writing files");
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    /**
     * Okay so all we have to do here is find the screen with the lowest x, the
     * screen with the lowest y, the screen with the higtest value of X+ width
     * and the screen with the highest value of Y+height
     * 
     * @return A rectangle that covers the all screens that might be nearby...
     */
    private static Rectangle getAllScreenBounds() {
        Rectangle allScreenBounds = new Rectangle();
        GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
        GraphicsDevice[] screens = ge.getScreenDevices();

        int farx = 0;
        int fary = 0;
        for (GraphicsDevice screen : screens) {
            Rectangle screenBounds = screen.getDefaultConfiguration().getBounds();
            // finding the one corner
            if (allScreenBounds.x > screenBounds.x) {
                allScreenBounds.x = screenBounds.x;
            }
            if (allScreenBounds.y > screenBounds.y) {
                allScreenBounds.y = screenBounds.y;
            }
            // finding the other corner
            if (farx < (screenBounds.x + screenBounds.width)) {
                farx = screenBounds.x + screenBounds.width;
            }
            if (fary < (screenBounds.y + screenBounds.height)) {
                fary = screenBounds.y + screenBounds.height;
            }
            allScreenBounds.width = farx - allScreenBounds.x;
            allScreenBounds.height = fary - allScreenBounds.y;
        }
        return allScreenBounds;
    }
}

Answer 1

The other answers are right that Java will use as much memory as it is allowed to, at which point it will garbage collect. To work around this, you can specify a smaller max heap size in the JVM settings. You do this with the -Xmx setting. For example, if you think you only need 32MB, run it as:

java -Xmx32M [your main class or jar here]

The heap of your program (the non-stack memory) will never take more than 32MB, but it will crash if it needs more than that at once (and that's where you'll need to profile). I don't see any obvious leaks in your program (assuming ImageIO doesn't require any cleanup), though, so I think you'll be fine.

Answer 2

JVM garbage collector will eventually clear your memory heap. For manually clearing that heap call Runtime.getRuntime().gc();, but I don't advise doing that for every 5 minutes.

Answer 3

For a modern computer, 200MB is not an excessive amount of memory. The JVM will let the heap grow for a while if you're creating and discarding lots of objects so that your program doesn't get bogged down with garbage collection. Let your program run for several hours and then check back if you think there's a problem.