A memory leak that has plagued some Android 5.0 users since the first developer preview has finally been marked closed and 'FutureRelease' in the Android issue tracker today.

The bug caused device memory to fill up and fail to clear, resulting in random crashes for memory-intensive applications that run in the background, like Play Music or even the launcher process. Needless to say - it was a deeply frustrating issue. Most persons affected seemed to either own Nexus 5s or Nexus 7s, though other devices may have fallen victim to it as well.

Fun fact: this particular bug climbed all the way to the 34th highest ever position in the Android issue tracker by number of stars, at over 1750. More extraordinary, perhaps, is that prior to being closed it was the most-starred unresolved issue in the tracker aside from a couple of really old ones dating back to 2010, despite having been in the issue tracker for only 6 weeks. Impressive turnaround time, I guess (by Google standards, at least).

Being marked 'FutureRelease,' that means we can expect this fix... in the future. Android 5.0. 2 3 anyone?

Android Issue Tracker