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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T18:12:41+00:00

With ARC sometimes I still need to write a -dealloc method to do some

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With ARC sometimes I still need to write a -dealloc method to do some cleanup. In some rare cases I need to refer to properties of the instance to properly do cleanup. Such as unregistering from NSNotificationCenter with a given sender object, which is owned and referenced by a property.

Does ARC insert it’s property release code at the end of after my own code, or does it insert this at the beginning of -dealloc, before my own code?

If ARC would be inserting code before any custom -dealloc code, then this would be very dangerous since you can’t access properties anymore if needed.

This question is about where ARC inserts the property release code in a synthesized -dealloc, and not about wether or not to implement -dealloc.

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  1. Editorial Team

    ARC releases instance variables at the end of the dealloc chain. In other words, all the dealloc methods in the inheritance chain are run, and then any ARC-managed instance variables will be deallocated. You could think of it as happening in -[NSObject dealloc], though it’s really even later than that.

    So rest assured; ARC won’t release your properties out from under you in your -dealloc method. ARC won’t release them until you have no way to reference them anymore.

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