How to Efficiently Manage Memory Usage in Flutter ListView with Large Datasets?

Question

I'm facing a challenge in my Flutter application where I need to efficiently manage memory usage while working with very large datasets in a ListView.

Imagine the following scenario:

I have a remote data source containing potentially millions of items.
My Flutter ListView initially displays a subset of this data (e.g., the first 50 items).
As the user scrolls to the end of the ListView, I fetch the next batch of data (another 50 items) from the remote source and append it to the existing dataset.

My concern is about the potential memory overhead and performance impact of storing such a large dataset, especially as new data is dynamically loaded and appended to the existing dataset.

I want to ensure that the application remains responsive and memory-efficient, even when dealing with very large datasets. What are some best practices or strategies for managing memory usage in this scenario?

Additionally, I'd like to emphasize that my question is not about the implementation of lazy loading, paging, pagination, or infinite lists per se. I'm already familiar with these techniques. Rather, I'm specifically interested in understanding and addressing the potential memory problems that may arise each time a new dataset is fetched and appended to the main dataset.

Any insights, suggestions, or experiences shared would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help!

Use ListView.builder, rendering is on demand, only visible children are rendered and discarded when leaving the screen. The documentation explains the use case. Regarding memory management, at a high level there are few or no options for direct management of allocations, unlike the native one. If I'm wrong, someone correct me. — Chance
– Chance, Commented Apr 15, 2024 at 1:08

manhtuan21 · Accepted Answer · 2024-04-15 03:28:45Z

ListView.builder will only render the UI of the visible children, so it will still work smoothly no matter how much data you have. Just make sure you don't define'shrinkWrap: true` in your ListView.builder.

The only problem you have left is that the dataset may be too big when stored on the user's device. But with only 50 items per one fetch, I think the biggest amount of data a weird patient user can scroll is below 10000. I don't find any document specifying how much data you can store, but from my real experience, I already have a ListView with about 2000 items, and it still works fine.

But if you really want to be careful on this, try to make a lazy load view not only when you reach the end of the scroll but also when you reach the start of the scroll. When the user scrolls down, for example, scrolls to item 1000, then removes all items before 500, and lazy loads it again if the user scrolls back.

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