EditText causing memory leak

I have found a solution that fits my needs.

I tracked the problem down to widget.EditableInputConnection. Which I think does the lookup in the suggestion system. It is also responsible for holding on to my Activity, hence causing a memory leak.

I do not need the suggestions so I wanted to turn it off. However it has proven to be difficult. EditText.setInputType did not work, neither in xml nor code.

I ended up doing the following. The magic is happening in onCreateInputConnection():

public class MyEditText extends TextView {
    public MyEditText(Context context) {
        this(context, null);
    }

    public MyEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        this(context, attrs, android.R.attr.editTextStyle);
    }

    public MyEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
    }

    @Override
    public InputConnection onCreateInputConnection(EditorInfo outAttrs) {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    protected boolean getDefaultEditable() {
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    protected MovementMethod getDefaultMovementMethod() {
        return ArrowKeyMovementMethod.getInstance();
    }

    @Override
    public Editable getText() {
        return (Editable) super.getText();
    }

    @Override
    public void setText(CharSequence text, BufferType type) {
        super.setText(text, BufferType.EDITABLE);
    }

    /**
     * Convenience for {@link Selection#setSelection(Spannable, int, int)}.
     */
    public void setSelection(int start, int stop) {
        Selection.setSelection(getText(), start, stop);
    }

    /**
     * Convenience for {@link Selection#setSelection(Spannable, int)}.
     */
    public void setSelection(int index) {
        Selection.setSelection(getText(), index);
    }

    /**
     * Convenience for {@link Selection#selectAll}.
     */
    public void selectAll() {
        Selection.selectAll(getText());
    }

    /**
     * Convenience for {@link Selection#extendSelection}.
     */
    public void extendSelection(int index) {
        Selection.extendSelection(getText(), index);
    }

    @Override
    public void setEllipsize(TextUtils.TruncateAt ellipsis) {
        if (ellipsis == TextUtils.TruncateAt.MARQUEE) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("EditText cannot use the ellipsize mode "
                    + "TextUtils.TruncateAt.MARQUEE");
        }
        super.setEllipsize(ellipsis);
    }
}

Where the trick is to refuse the InputConnection. This removes the suggestions and removes the memory leak.

Hope this helps you to..