Webview control consumes too much memory in WP 8.1 Runtime

Question

I am developing a Windows Phone 8.1 Store app (C#/XAML) and I use a Webview control on one of the app pages. Everything was OK until my app started to close with no exceptions. I suspected memory issues and was actually right. I've made some profiling
and became certain the problem was with the Webview control. When I navigate to some web page, the (unmanaged) memory consumption grows rapidly, and in some further navigations it exceeds the memory limits (180 MB for low-memory devices) and the app terminates.
Manual garbage collector calls do not help even when the page that hosts Webview control is closed. I am stuck now and have no idea how I can deal with this problem.

Answer 1

OK. I've created a very simple demo for you. You can grab it here
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A2B175448055B3F3!6839&authkey=!AFD34k9bZwDaelE&ithint=file%2czip
Navigate to some pages while profiling and you will see how the memory consumption grows. The memory isn't cleared even after WebBrowserPage is closed. For a low-memory device it's enough to navigate to 2-3 such web pages to get the app terminated.
Hi Max,
Yes, I can reproduce this issue on my side:
In my experience, this should be related to WebView memory cache, unfortunately, currently there is no way to dispose this programmatically.
A possible workaround would be adding WebView control dynamically and removing it when navigate away from this page:
void HardwareButtons_BackPressed(object sender, BackPressedEventArgs e)
e.Handled = true;
var frame = Window.Current.Content as Frame;
if (frame != null && frame.CanGoBack)
grid1.Children.Clear();
GC.Collect();
frame.GoBack();
protected override void OnNavigatedTo(NavigationEventArgs e)
if (e.Parameter != null && e.Parameter is string)
GC.Collect();
WebView webView = new WebView();
grid1.Children.Add(webView);
webView.Navigate(new Uri((string)e.Parameter));
Diagnostics:
Thank you for your response and solution. Unfortunately it doesn't fully help, because the memory isn't fully cleaned by GC and in some time of actively using a Webview it is leaking anyway. But garbage collecting makes sense as it helps the in-use memory
not to grow so fast.
So I think this is a best solution we have so far. I wish a Webview would be better in further versions of Windows Phone.