Closing apps in the background: this is how it works on Android

Whether it’s auto-loading images or receiving messages, some features require a background service to work. These features usually only put a small burden on the smartphone, but too many of these services can slow down the user interface. And sometimes said background process fails. Then, at the latest, it’s time to finish the process and we’ll show you how to do it! Menus may vary slightly on smartphones from different manufacturers, but you can still use our screenshots as a guide.

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Discover the culprit of the application

You don’t always know directly which app is causing the problems on your tablet or smartphone. Especially when an app that has been installed for a long time suddenly gets in the way. Fortunately, finding the cause is quite easy. There are two tools for this:

Check battery consumption

In general, it’s not a good idea to close apps that are running in the background to supposedly save battery power. Restarting the app wastes more than it saves. Sometimes, however, one drives background process blocked to higher power consumption and this can be seen in the detailed information about the battery. look below for that Settings > Battery and open the area through the menu (the three dots in the upper right corner). battery usage. Here you can see the power consumption listed according to the applications. Now open the menu again and let yourself view full device usage.

The screen usually appears at the top as the largest consumer of energy. If you haven’t used an app recently, but it still appears high on this list, something might be fishy. With a click on an application entry there is detailed information. Here you can also exit the app if the battery and resource consumption is too much and you can also see how many minutes it was actively used and how long it was active in the background.

Check active services

Before closing an application or terminating a service, you should consult a second source of information. Android keeps detailed information about the app’s resource consumption for you under the point active services Clever. To access this, you first have to enable developer options. You can read how to do this here:

After you have activated the developer options, you can enter the dot active services to call. Here you can see which app uses how much memory and how much RAM is left free. If an app is using a suspiciously high amount of memory here, you can select it and on the next page you’ll find which background services the app started.

You activate the point through the menu in the upper right corner show cached processes, It will even show you which apps are still in the cache.

Actions: disable app, uninstall and force close

If the app culprit is found, it goes to the app details. you can find them below Settings > Apps & notifications > Show all apps. Tap on the respective app that is causing problems. Here you have different options to solve the problem.

Usually in the beginning force quit (Sometimes also forced stop) type. This measure should at least help against crashed apps and also stops an app’s background processes.

If that didn’t work, tap memory and cache and then up clear cache. Now the app’s cache is flushed, which helps, for example, if the app just got “stuck” somehow. That didn’t work either? Then come back and this time play Delete memory contents. It will erase the settings you have made and you may have to log in to the app again.

If you want to stop a service permanently, use the options Deactivate either uninstall. Deactivate it means that the application will no longer start, but will remain in the internal memory. This may be the case for bundled applications, for example, because the manufacturer installs these applications as a system application that cannot be easily removed by the user. uninstall again it does exactly that: it deletes the application from the internal memory of your smartphone.

If you want to end an individual service of an application in a specific way, the options in the detail view of the function will help you. active services. However, you have to be very careful here, because many applications don’t work well when a single component is finished.

But be careful: if you are not sure what the application is for, you should not act too quickly: because some services are essential for the correct functioning of Android or other applications. A reboot can often do wonders, because a reboot forces Android to restart all running background processes.

Special case: instructions for Huawei smartphones

Every smartphone manufacturer does its own thing when it comes to optimizing the Android operating system. Huawei devices have been widely praised for their good battery life. But disappointment soon followed, as this long runtime came at the expense of the functionality of individual apps. Users complained about missing notifications from chat apps like Threema or Telegram, and I missed quite a few eBay auctions because the reminder didn’t come on time.

It took a lot of updates to Huawei’s EMUI user interface before user-friendly management for auto-launch apps was finally created. Since its operation is not yet completely intuitive, we will guide you through the corresponding menus. The following screenshot shows…

You will quickly see that background app management in Huawei is solved much more elegantly than in the general example above. The problem: the factory settings are set too aggressively. Because Huawei smartphones prohibit most apps from starting automatically or continuing to run in the background. So, as soon as you close eBay or Telegram, you can expect these apps to not receive notifications or at least very late.

To improve this behavior, go to the “Application launches” setting and then uncheck the automatic management behind the application in question. Leave the box checked and confirmed in the pop-up message.

I personally manage my app releases completely manually. I am generous and give all rights to various applications. Battery life has deteriorated negligibly since then. To reset, open the menu (as shown in the screenshot above) and manage the apps and their startup behavior manually. In particular, you can set free games or apps with annoying notifications to only run when you’re actively using them.

There is a second option at this point to control the activity and thus indirectly the battery consumption of background apps: In the menu Application startup data Huawei shows you in chronological order which apps have recently triggered a background startup.

the shopping app aliexpress just like him a hardware camera From the sample screenshot, I’ll stop right away. For this, I will disable automatic left screenshot management for these apps and check all three (Auto start, secondary release What In the background) to prohibit background activity from these apps.