Cleaner captures object reference

Reports Runnable passed to a Cleaner.register() capturing reference being registered. If the reference is captured, it will never be phantom reachable and the cleaning action will never be invoked.

Possible sources of this problem:

Lambda using non-static methods, fields, or this itself
Non-static inner class (anonymous or not) always captures this reference in java up to 18 version
Instance method reference
Access to outer class non-static members from non-static inner class

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

CapturingCleaner

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Probable bugs

Sample of code that will be reported:

  int fileDescriptor;
  Cleaner.Cleanable cleanable = Cleaner.create().register(this, () -> {
    System.out.println("adsad");
    //this is captured via fileDescriptor
    fileDescriptor = 0;
  });

This inspection only reports if the language level of the project or module is 9 or higher.

New in 2018.1

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection CapturingCleaner

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025