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Without an explicit gcTime, inactive queries using staleTime: Infinity stay "fresh" forever and never get garbage collected. Setting gcTime to 30 min ensures inactive query data is eventually cleaned up while being generous enough for a long-running desktop app.
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jonathanlab
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Mar 30, 2026
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afaik gcTime and staleTime are fully independent. Garbage collection is only triggered once a query has zero observers right? So if a query with staleTime: infinity has no observers, it gets garbage collected after 5 minutes. If it has observers, it'll just stay around infinitely.
I do not see how bumping it to 30 minutes helps in this scenario, as it would only increase cache retention, but I might be wrong :)
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You are right, there's no point changing this, I misunderstood the setting's impact |
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Problem
We set
staleTimeglobally but never setgcTime. TanStack Query's default gcTime is 5 min which sounds fine, but queries that override withstaleTime: Infinity(we have a bunch) stay "fresh" forever, meaning the GC never kicks in for them even when they go inactive.Changes
Set an explicit
gcTime: 30minat the client level so inactive query data always gets cleaned up regardless of staleTime. 30 min is generous enough for a long-running desktop app where you're switching between tasks/files, but prevents multi-hour sessions from hoarding stale data indefinitely.