KOOM is an out-of-memory monitoring and analysis tool for Android applications that detects and reports heap-related problems in production environments.
KOOM addresses the challenge of diagnosing memory leaks and OOM crashes on mobile devices where traditional debugging approaches are impractical. The tool operates through three specialized monitoring modules. The Java Leak Monitor uses a copy-on-write mechanism to fork child processes for heap dumps, eliminating the app freezes that occur during traditional dump operations. The Native Leak Monitor applies tracing garbage collection to analyze the entire native heap and directly output leaked memory details including allocation sizes and stack traces. The Thread Leak Monitor hooks thread lifecycle functions to periodically detect and report thread leaks. This multi-dimensional approach allows developers to identify memory problems across Java heap, native heap, and threading layers without requiring pre-release detection or extensive manual analysis.
Teams managing Android applications with complex business logic, high-memory scenarios like 4K codec or AR features, or frequent OOM crashes in production should consider KOOM. The tool is particularly suited for applications where OOM surges occur unpredictably across thousands of experimental variants and where traditional pre-release prevention is insufficient. The project supports Android API level 18 and above, with both c++_shared and c++_static linking modes available for native modules.
The project maintains active issue tracking and welcomes community contributions through its established guidelines. Development activity shows ongoing refinement of the monitoring capabilities with detailed changelog documentation of improvements and fixes.
