Crash on Android When Closing PDF Page After Scrolling || java.lang.IllegalStateException: Already closed

[maneesh-techversant]

We are encountering an app crash on Android devices when a user is viewing a PDF using react-native-pdf and closes the page after scrolling through it. The issue is consistently reported in Firebase with an IllegalStateException: Already closed error in the stack trace.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open a PDF with the react-native-pdf component.
2. Scroll or slide through multiple pages.
3. Close the PDF viewing page (e.g., by navigating away or closing the screen).
4. The app crashes.

Stack Trace (Firebase Report):

E FATAL EXCEPTION: PDF renderer
Process: com.app, PID: [varies]
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Already closed
    at io.legere.pdfiumandroid.util.ConfigKt.handleAlreadyClosed(Config.kt:20)
    at io.legere.pdfiumandroid.PdfPage.close(PdfPage.kt:582)
    at kotlin.io.CloseableKt.closeFinally(Closeable.kt:56)
    at io.legere.pdfiumandroid.PdfiumCore.renderPageBitmap(PdfiumCore.kt:406)
    at com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.PdfFile.renderPageBitmap(PdfFile.java:301)
    at com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.RenderingHandler.proceed(RenderingHandler.java:109)
    at com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.RenderingHandler.handleMessage(RenderingHandler.java:66)
    at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:117)
    at android.os.Looper.loopOnce(Looper.java:205)
    at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:293)
    at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:110)

Environment:

• Platform: Android
• Library: react-native-pdf
• react-native-pdf version: 7.0.0
• React Native Version: 0.81.4
• Affected on multiple Android device models

Expected Behavior:
Closing the PDF page should safely release resources without crashing the app.

Observed Behavior:
The app terminates with a fatal exception mentioning "Already closed" in the PDF renderer.

Additional Notes:

• The issue is critical as it affects the core PDF viewing functionality and is being observed frequently in production.

Request:
Please investigate the page closure and resource disposal logic to ensure the PDF component handles repeated or premature closures gracefully. A fix or guidance to mitigate these crashes would be highly appreciated.

[InfoGreen-Suku]

I am Also facing the same issue

[Prajwaltechversant]

I’m also facing the same crash on Android when closing a PDF after scrolling.

[saif-techversant]

+1

[ersyhsyn]

+1

[marius-styreportalen]

From what I can see, appearantly pdfiumandroid:1.0.33 was supposed to fix this, but for me it would crash when i built the app, 1.0.34 which recently released should be good.

I can't verify 100% that it works, but you can try for yourself by either overwriting the installed version in your own app/build.gradle file, or you could patch the package yourself in the library android/build.gradle i believe.

rnproject/android/app/build.gradle:

dependencies { 
    /** Other dependencies */
    implementation("io.legere:pdfiumandroid:1.0.34")  
}

[acuD1]

I did patch from 1.0.32, still having the issue.

diff --git a/android/build.gradle b/android/build.gradle
index 34da3248a540ad228acc7c4efdf294bf2f3b79e4..1635531ed1f984818efb13047dc792ff4d6ba747 100644
--- a/android/build.gradle
+++ b/android/build.gradle
@@ -143,6 +143,6 @@ dependencies {
     // The repo from zacharee is based on PdfiumAndroidKt, a much newer fork of PdfiumAndroid, with better maintenance and updated native libraries.
     implementation 'com.github.zacharee:AndroidPdfViewer:4.0.1'
     // Depend on PdfiumAndroidKt directly so this can be updated independently of AndroidPdfViewer as updates are provided.
-    implementation 'io.legere:pdfiumandroid:1.0.32'
+    implementation 'io.legere:pdfiumandroid:1.0.34'
     implementation 'com.google.code.gson:gson:2.13.2'
 }

[sangmin4208]

I'm not 100% sure, but it appears the issue doesn't happen when the PDF renderer is wrapped with memo and the page prop isn't used.

[DYP1016]

+1

[DYP1016]

I found a workaround that can be solved by modifying the following source code:

public class PdfView extends PDFView implements OnPageChangeListener,OnLoadCompleteListener,OnErrorListener,OnTapListener,OnDrawListener,OnPageScrollListener, LinkHandler {
   public PdfView(Context context, AttributeSet set){
        super(context, set);

       //add
        try {
            Field field = PDFView.class.getDeclaredField("pdfiumCore");
            field.setAccessible(true);
            field.set(this, new PdfiumCore(context, new Config(new DefaultLogger(), AlreadyClosedBehavior.IGNORE)));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

At the same time, update the version of pdfiumandroid

dependencies { 
    /** Other dependencies */
    implementation("io.legere:pdfiumandroid:1.0.34")  
}

By setting the parameter AlreadyClosedBehavior.IGNORE, you can solve the Java layer crash, and by setting the pdfiumandroid version to 1.0.34, you can solve the C++ layer crash

[chrismclarke]

I'm not 100% sure, but it appears the issue doesn't happen when the PDF renderer is wrapped with memo and the page prop isn't used.

I found the same solution working for me too. It appears that any time props update the PDF is forced to re-render, however if props change rapidly this can call new render actions before previous ones have completed.

I found wrapping my viewer in a memo that only re-renders when the input source change updates was a reasonable workaround, e.g.

import { memo } from "react";
import Pdf, { PdfProps, Source } from "react-native-pdf";

/**
 * Isolated PDF component that only re-renders when URI actually changes.
 * This prevents the native onAfterUpdateTransaction from being called during animations.
 *
 * NOTE - parent component should also only try to limit rate at which passed uri updates
 */
export const IsolatedPdfView = memo(
  (props: PdfProps) => {
    return <Pdf {...props} />;
  },
  // Only re-render if URI changes - ignore all other prop changes
  (prevProps, nextProps) => (prevProps.source as Source).uri === (nextProps.source as Source).uri,
);

I still had the issue re-emerge on some older devices if changing source uri rapidly, and so added some extra logic to the parent component to debounce source uri changes.

From the java implementation, I think the issue possibly comes from

@Override
    public void onAfterUpdateTransaction(PdfView pdfView) {
        super.onAfterUpdateTransaction(pdfView);
        pdfView.drawPdf();
    }

Given the source suggests that

/**
   * Callback that will be triggered after all properties are updated in current update transaction
   * (all @ReactProp handlers for properties updated in current transaction have been called). If
   * you want to override this method you should call super.onAfterUpdateTransaction from it as the
   * parent class of the ViewManager may rely on callback being executed.
   */
  protected void onAfterUpdateTransaction(@NonNull T view) {}

So I'm not really sure how fixable it is from a react-native-pdf side (quite implementation-specific)... perhaps the documentation could provide some guidance around avoiding too many prop-based rerenders? Or maybe there is a better way to memoise prop changes within the react-native-pdf component?

[dule-vikki]

I can not reproduce this crash in my Emulator, but I can confirm that I see this crash event in Firebase dashboard.

@DYP1016 your workaround is still work right?

[dule-vikki]

Oh, now I can reproduce this bug by scrolling really fast pdfview and navigating to a new screen. then I try to use your workaround @DYP1016, but can not fix :(.

FATAL EXCEPTION: PDF renderer
Process: com.galaxyfinx.vikki.uat, PID: 15581
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Already closed
	at io.legere.pdfiumandroid.PdfDocument.openPage(PdfDocument.kt:144)
	at io.legere.pdfiumandroid.PdfiumCore.renderPageBitmap(PdfiumCore.kt:503)
	at com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.PdfFile.renderPageBitmap(PdfFile.java:301)
	at com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.RenderingHandler.proceed(RenderingHandler.java:109)
	at com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.RenderingHandler.handleMessage(RenderingHandler.java:66)
	at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:107)
	at android.os.Looper.loopOnce(Looper.java:232)
	at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:317)
	at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:85)

implementation 'io.legere:pdfiumandroid:1.0.34'
try {
    Field field = PDFView.class.getDeclaredField("pdfiumCore");
    field.setAccessible(true);
    field.set(this, new PdfiumCore(context, new Config(new DefaultLogger(), AlreadyClosedBehavior.IGNORE)));
} catch (Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

[dule-vikki]

@wonday Could you help this?

[Natanaelvich]

I migrated the PDF viewing implementation to https://github.com/126punith/react-native-pdf-jsi, and since then I have not encountered this crash anymore. It seems the issue is resolved with this library.