jargon

Frontend & browser·JavaScript in the browser

you removed the element from the page but a variable still points at it, so it never gets collected.

Detached DOM node

Also calleddetached element, DOM leak

A node removed from the document that JavaScript still references, keeping it and its entire subtree in memory. It is the most common leak shape in a single-page application, produced by caching elements, by listeners on `window` that close over them, and by components that unmount without cleaning up. The memory profiler reports these directly, which makes it the fastest leak to confirm once you suspect it.

Commonly confused with