How to Count Number of Instances of a Class

Pleae try the tool of java

jmap -histo <PDID>

Out put

     num     #instances         #bytes  class name
----------------------------------------------
   1:       1105141       97252408  java.lang.reflect.Method
   2:       3603562       86485488  java.lang.Double
   3:       1191098       28586352  java.lang.String
   4:        191694       27035744  [C

In addition, you should override finalize method to decrement the counter

public class Bicycle {
...
    public static int instances = 0;

    {
        ++instances; //separate counting from constructor
    }
...
    public Bicycle(int gear, int speed, int seatHeight, String color) {
        gear = 0;
        speed = 0;
        seatHeight = 0;
        color ="Unknown";
    }

    @Override
    protected void finalize() {
        super.finalize();
        --instances;
    }

}

You should have in mind that static variables are CLASS scoped (there is no one for each instance, only one per class)

Then, you could demonstrate instance decrement with:

...
System.out.println("Count:" + Bicycle.getNumOfInstances()); // 2
bicycle1 = null;
bicycle2 = null;
System.gc(); // not guaranteed to collect but it will in this case
Thread.sleep(2000); // you expect to check again after some time
System.out.println("Count again:" + Bicycle.getNumOfInstances()); // 0

Since static variables are initialized only once, and they're shared between all instances, you can:

class MyClass {

    private static int counter;

    public MyClass() {
        //...
        counter++;
    }

    public static int getNumOfInstances() {
        return counter;
    }
}

and to access the static field counter you can use MyClass.getNumOfInstances()

Read more about static fields in the JLS - 8.3.1.1. static Fields:

If a field is declared static, there exists exactly one incarnation of the field, no matter how many instances (possibly zero) of the class may eventually be created. A static field, sometimes called a class variable, is incarnated when the class is initialized (§12.4).

^{Note that counter is implicitly set to zero}