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Asked: 2026-05-30T14:01:18+00:00

jQuery-selectable is causing memory leaks. How can I prevent this? Is there something I

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jQuery-selectable is causing memory leaks. How can I prevent this? Is there something I am missing?

I have a complex web app that uses multiple instances of jquery UI-selectable. I have been using sIEve to track memory leaks and I notice the number of leaks is equal to the number of ui-selectable instances.

I wrote a simple test page that uses selectable as minimally as I could think of. In sIEve, it caused 1 memory leak (div#b).

Here is the HTML:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>test leaks with selectable</title>

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-ui.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="testLeaks.js"></script>
</head>

<body>

<div id="b"></div>

</body>
</html>

And here is testleaks.js:

function begin() {
    $('#b').selectable();
}

function unloadCleanup() {
    $('#b').selectable('destroy');
    $('#b').remove();
}

$(window).unload(unloadCleanup);
$(document).ready(begin);

I only included unloadCleanup and the .unload handler after I already saw the leak. It makes no difference with or without it.

This seems to be evidence that simply activating jquery-selectable causes a memory leak.

Next I changed testleaks.html to include sub-divs:

<div id="b">
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
</div>

In sIEve, I loaded the page and selected one of the sub-divs. The number of resulting leaks was 11 – one for the selectable div itself, and one for each selectee.

Selecting more than one sub-div did not increase the number of leaks. The number of leaks was 11 if any sub-divs were selected, and 1 if no sub-divs were selected.

Using jQuery 1.6.4, and jQuery-UI 1.8.16 with selectable, dialog, and datepicker, and the lightness theme.

Is there something I’m doing wrong?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The cause was not selectable. It was apparently datepicker.

    Out of curiosity I updated to jQuery 1.7.1 and jQuery UI 1.8.18 with the same components (selectable, dialog, and datepicker). It still had the same issue with memory leaks.

    I tried the same version without datepicker, using only selectable and dialog, and the memory leaks disappeared.

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