Background and Architectural Context

Jetpack Compose uses a declarative UI paradigm, where the UI is a function of state. Under the hood, it employs a composition phase to build the UI tree, a layout phase to measure and place elements, and a draw phase for rendering. State changes trigger recomposition of affected parts of the tree. While Compose offers fine-grained control, incorrect scoping of state or inefficient recomposition triggers can cause serious performance issues—especially in enterprise apps where screens display thousands of items or complex animations.

Common Architectural Factors in Enterprise Apps

• Multi-module projects mixing Compose with XML Views.
• Use of coroutines, flows, and LiveData to drive UI state.
• Shared ViewModels across navigation graphs or activity boundaries.
• Heavy use of custom layout modifiers and draw modifiers.
• Interoperation with third-party SDKs not optimized for Compose.

Diagnostics

Detecting Excessive Recomposition

Enable the Compose Recomposition Counts tooling in Android Studio to visualize recomposition frequency. If key composables recompose far more often than expected, inspect their parameters for mutable types or unstable references.

// Example: Stable state holder to reduce recomposition
@Immutable
data class UiState(val items: List<Item>, val isLoading: Boolean)

@Composable
fun ItemList(uiState: UiState) {
    LazyColumn {
        items(uiState.items) { item -> Text(item.name) }
    }
}

Profiling Performance

Use the Android Studio Profiler and Trace system to measure UI thread time. Look for long layout or draw phases caused by expensive modifiers or custom layouts.

Memory Leak Detection

Check for leaks with LeakCanary. Pay attention to composables holding references to activities, contexts, or large bitmaps outside of a proper lifecycle scope.

Common Pitfalls

• Passing mutable collections directly to composables.
• Creating state objects inside composable functions without remember or rememberSaveable.
• Overusing LaunchedEffect without considering cancellation on recomposition.
• Misusing rememberCoroutineScope for long-lived operations tied to transient UI.
• Failing to mark data classes as @Stable or @Immutable when appropriate.

Step-by-Step Fix

1. Optimize State Hoisting

Move state to the lowest common owner that needs it, and avoid unnecessary state duplication across composables.

2. Use Stable Types

Ensure that data passed to composables is stable to prevent unnecessary recomposition. Use @Immutable or @Stable annotations for data classes that do not change structure.

3. Control Effects

Use LaunchedEffect with well-defined keys to avoid re-running effects unnecessarily:

@Composable
fun DataLoader(id: String) {
    LaunchedEffect(id) {
        // fetch data for id
    }
}

4. Profile and Refactor Custom Layouts

Benchmark any custom Layout composables for efficiency, minimizing measurement passes and draw calls.

5. Interop with Legacy Views Safely

When embedding Views with AndroidView, dispose of them properly and avoid leaking contexts.

Best Practices for Large-Scale Compose Apps

• Adopt a unidirectional data flow pattern (e.g., MVI) to make recompositions predictable.
• Keep composables small and focused to improve reusability and testability.
• Leverage rememberSaveable for state that must survive configuration changes.
• Regularly profile with Compose-specific tools to catch regressions early.
• Write UI tests to validate state restoration and recomposition behavior.

Conclusion

Jetpack Compose offers tremendous benefits, but at enterprise scale, its declarative nature demands careful state management and recomposition control. By hoisting state appropriately, ensuring data stability, managing effects wisely, and profiling regularly, teams can prevent performance bottlenecks and memory leaks. The result is a maintainable, responsive, and predictable UI layer—even in the most complex Android applications.

FAQs

1. Why does my Compose screen recompose every second?

Likely due to unstable or mutable parameters being passed to composables. Ensure all inputs are stable and avoid creating new objects in recomposition paths.

2. Can I mix Jetpack Compose and XML layouts in production?

Yes, but be mindful of lifecycle and rendering differences. Dispose of embedded views properly and avoid overusing interop for performance-critical paths.

3. How do I persist state across process death?

Use rememberSaveable with appropriate savers, or persist state in ViewModels backed by SavedStateHandle.

4. Does marking a data class as @Immutable improve performance?

It allows Compose to skip recomposition when the object is unchanged, but correctness depends on actual immutability of the class.

5. How can I detect unnecessary recomposition in CI?

Leverage Compose metrics tooling with automated benchmarks to track recomposition counts and flag regressions in pull requests.