In what situations does garbage collector automatically clean up memory?

Automatic memory cleanup by the garbage collector (GC) occurs when objects in memory become unreachable, meaning there are no more references to them from active code.

Main situations when garbage collection occurs:

• Objects are no longer used, and references to them are removed or become invalid.
• Memory starts to fill up, and the system decides to free unused objects to prevent OutOfMemoryError.
• In Android, GC is triggered automatically depending on memory load and application activity.

For example, if you create an object and then nullify all references to it or exit its scope, this object becomes a candidate for garbage collection.

Important: The garbage collector does not guarantee immediate deletion of objects, but only frees memory as needed.