How can you manually initiate garbage collection in a program?

In Java and Android, you can manually initiate garbage collection by calling the method:

System.gc();

This call merely suggests to the JVM to perform garbage collection, but does not guarantee its immediate execution. In Android, it works similarly — calling System.gc() may help free memory, but the exact timing of the garbage collector is controlled by the system.

Use this method with caution, as frequent calls can negatively impact application performance.