Optimizing Image Loading in the Beike Android App: Replacing Picasso with Glide to Prevent OOM

Current Situation : During testing of the Beike real‑estate Android app, an Out‑Of‑Memory (OOM) crash was observed when browsing the second‑hand house list on devices running Android versions below 8.0, primarily because loaded images occupied excessive heap memory (Picasso: 220.7 MB, Glide: 85.8 MB).

Refactoring Cost : Switching from Picasso to Glide requires adding a Context parameter to existing image‑loading calls, but the change is limited to updating the method signatures and passing the extra context.

Technical Principle : Glide employs a two‑level cache – an activeResources map holding weak references to currently displayed images and an LruCache for off‑screen images. On the test device, Glide’s LruCache is only 16 MB compared with Picasso’s ~160 MB, resulting in roughly 50 % lower heap usage. Glide also integrates with the Activity/Fragment lifecycle, automatically pausing/resuming requests and cleaning up resources on onStop and onDestroy , which further reduces memory pressure.

Outlook : Among the three major Android image libraries (Glide, Picasso, Fresco), Glide is Google’s recommended solution. Replacing Picasso with Glide in the Beike app incurs minimal development effort while eliminating OOM crashes for the roughly 64 % of users still on Android 8.0 or lower.

Author: Gao Rui (Android Engineer, Beike)