Marc Charbonneau

If you’re the type of developer who’s always digging into the Cocoa frameworks to find the stuff that makes your life easier, you’re probably using NSCache. It’s a great class after all. Just store your temporary objects in an NSCache instead of an NSMutableDictionary, and you won’t have to worry about memory usage. Right?

Not exactly. A recent conversation on Twitter reminded me of my own experiences working with NSCache and memory warnings. Although it’s natural to expect NSCache to clear itself in response to a memory warning notification, this isn’t what actually happens. NSCache does automatically evict objects, but this behavior is very unclear and undocumented. In short, don’t depend on it. It’s possible for your app to receive memory warnings, and even crash due to low memory, all without NSCache lifting a finger to help. Instead, keep doing what you’ve always done. Register for low memory notifications and manually release any objects that aren’t essential, whether they’re stored within NSCache or otherwise.

There’s nothing wrong with using NSCache, but until the docs say otherwise don’t count on it to do the work for you.