Beyond the Recomposition Loop: A Real-World Guide to Jetpack Compose State

You’ve probably been there. It’s 11 p.m., you’re testing your new feature, and the UI starts flickering like a broken neon sign. Or worse, the app just hangs because you’ve accidentally triggered an infinite recomposition loop. State in Jetpack Compose is magic until it isn’t.

If you’re coming from the old world of XML and findViewById, Compose feels like a breath of fresh air. But here’s the cold truth: Compose doesn't punish you for having state; it punishes you for putting it in the wrong place. I've seen senior devs tear their hair out because they treated a Composable like a traditional View. It’s a different beast entirely.

What’s Broken in Most Compose Apps

Most of the "messy" code I review suffers from three specific sins:

1. Over-hoisting: Moving every single bit of UI state into a ViewModel.

2. The "Remember" Trap: Using remember for things that absolutely need to survive a screen rotation.
Heavy Composables: Putting complex logic inside the UI layer, making testing a nightmare.

The Hierarchy of Truth: Where Does Your Data Live?

In my experience, 90% of state bugs are just "placement errors." You don't need a PhD in architecture; you just need to ask the right questions before you type mutableStateOf.

The Decision Matrix

Level 1: The Basics (Don't Overthink It)

The fundamental rule of Compose is Unidirectional Data Flow (UDF). State goes down, events go up.

// Don't do this - the child shouldn't own this state if the parent needs to know it
@Composable
fun BadInput() {
    var text by remember { mutableStateOf("") }
    TextField(value = text, text = it })
}

// Do this - State Hoisting
@Composable
fun GoodInput(value: String, onValueChange: (String) -> Unit) {
    TextField(value = value,
}

Here's the thing: If your GoodInput is used in five different places, you’ve just made it reusable and testable. Fragments were a pain to test; hoisted Composables are a dream.

Level 2: Advanced Patterns (The "Pro" Move)

As your app grows, mutableStateOf inside a Composable becomes a liability. That’s where MVI (Model-View-Intent) or robust MVVM comes in. In 2026, we’ve mostly moved away from LiveData. It’s all about StateFlow and SharedFlow.

The Lambda Optimization

I once saw a list of 500 items lag because the parent state was being read too often. If you pass a value directly, the whole Composable recomposes. If you pass a lambda, you defer the read.

Expert Tip: Wrap your state reads in a lambda () -> State if you’re passing them to a child that only needs them during a specific event. It keeps the "Heavy Lifting" out of the composition phase.

Level 3: The "War Stories" Real Mistakes

I worked on a fintech app where the "Total Balance" would randomly reset to zero when the user tilted their phone. The culprit? remember { mutableStateOf(balance) }.

The dev forgot that remember only lasts as long as the Composable is in the tree. A simple rotation kills the Activity, clears the memory, and poof your money is "gone" (until the next API sync). We fixed it by moving the balance into a ViewModel and using collectAsStateWithLifecycle().

Don't rely on remember for business data. Ever.

Performance Tuning: The "Secret" Checklist

If your app feels "heavy," check these three things immediately:

Stability: Are you using List or PersistentList? Standard Kotlin Lists are "unstable" to the Compose compiler, causing unnecessary UI refreshes.
derivedStateOf: If you're calculating a value based on another state (like "is the list scrolled to the bottom?"), wrap it in derivedStateOf. Without it, you’re recalculating on every single pixel of scroll.
Keys: Always use key in your LazyColumn. It’s the difference between a 10ms update and a 200ms jank-fest.

The Lifecycle Flow (2026 Standard)

1. User Intent: Clicks a button.
2. ViewModel: Processes the click, updates a MutableStateFlow.
3. UI Layer: Collects the state using collectAsStateWithLifecycle().
4. UI Updates: Only the specific text/image that changed gets redrawn.

Final Verdict

State management in Jetpack Compose isn't about learning a bunch of complex APIs. It’s about discipline. Keep your Composables "dumb," keep your ViewModels "smart," and always, always hoist your state higher than you think you need to but not so high that you’re recomposing the whole world.

Build it, break it, and then fix it with a lambda. That’s the real way to learn Compose.