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LEVEL_033.10June 27, 20261 min read

Garbage collection timing

Browser Performance

GC pauses main thread — large object graphs and allocation churn cause jank.

Summary

GC pauses main thread — large object graphs and allocation churn cause jank. Reuse objects in hot paths sparingly; avoid creating huge arrays each frame. performance.memory (Chrome) hints at pressure. Long tasks during idle may be GC — correlate with allocation timeline in Performance panel.


Code example

function processBatch(items) {
  const results = new Array(items.length);
  for (let i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
    results[i] = transform(items[i]);
  }
  return results;
}
// Reuse buffers in animation loops instead of allocating each frame

Key points

  • GC pauses main thread — large object graphs and allocation churn cause jank.
  • Reuse objects in hot paths sparingly; avoid creating huge arrays each frame.
  • performance.memory (Chrome) hints at pressure.
  • Long tasks during idle may be GC — correlate with allocation timeline in Performance panel.

Further reading

Related concepts