The SharedPointer is like the std::shared_ptr. A way to control the live-cycle of the embedded object. At the time the first parts of VSTGUI were written there was no std::shared_ptr one could use. So the reference count was embedded into the base class. So with this change, you now store the SharedPointer instead of COffscreenContext* and you never call forget or remember on it. If you want to get rid of it, just set the SharedPointer to nullptr and the object will automatically be destroyed if the reference count drops to zero.