How does Objective-C runtime manage autorelease pools per thread?

Updated May 17, 2026

Short answer

Each thread maintains a stack of autorelease pools for deterministic memory cleanup.

Deep explanation

Autorelease pools are implemented as nested stacks per thread. Each pool push creates a boundary. Objects added are stored in a chunk-based structure. On pop, all objects are released in reverse order. This design avoids cross-thread synchronization overhead.

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