hi i have only just got the hero and was wondering how to close apps properly. i have noticed that when you hold the home key for a while a window pops up showing some apps ...is this how you close them? or is simply pressing the home key shutting them .
The long press on home just brings up a list of apps that have been recently run. It's almost a task switcher, but not quite!
Many apps will exit if you "back" out of them - i.e. when in the app keep pressing back until you get back to the home screen. However, this isn't the case for all applications. Some may have an explicit exit or close button, whereas others may have nothing at all.
However, Android is pretty good at managing its own applications, and will kill/exit them as necessary. In my experience, there's little to be gained from explicitly killing applications using a task killer, but some people swear by it.
Regards,
Dave
foxmeister said:
The long press on home just brings up a list of apps that have been recently run. It's almost a task switcher, but not quite!
Many apps will exit if you "back" out of them - i.e. when in the app keep pressing back until you get back to the home screen. However, this isn't the case for all applications. Some may have an explicit exit or close button, whereas others may have nothing at all.
However, Android is pretty good at managing its own applications, and will kill/exit them as necessary. In my experience, there's little to be gained from explicitly killing applications using a task killer, but some people swear by it.
Regards,
Dave
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most Task Killers free up memory thats used by background apps.
so basicly back out of the app and let android do the rest of the worring. thanks for advise
risterdid said:
Most Task Killers free up memory thats used by background apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but the point is that Android itself will start killing applications if it starts to run low on resources. (see http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html)
Regards,
Dave
I'll attempt to sum it up once and for all, to try and set the record straight.
In Android's virtual machine, there is no functional differentiation between "closing" an app and "switching away from" an app. They are the same (the exception is things like music players which need to keep playing after you switch away from them, but even then only the 'service' part needs to keep running).
Whenever you switch away from an app, its current state is remembered so that even if it is effectively "killed" it can be returned to in just that state next time it's opened. Then Android either kills the process or it keeps it open, killing it when it needs the memory. You won't notice any difference between either scenario, except maybe that an app loads a little bit faster if it was kept in memory. At any rate, "closed" apps do not "run", and they do not take RAM or CPU cycles from other apps.
In terms of process/memory management, Android's VM has more in common with a web browser than a desktop OS - sure it can remember your state when you switch apps (like switching tabs, going back/forward/home in a browser) but whether behind the scenes it loads it all into and out of memory when you switch back and forth, or it all stays in memory is irrelevant to the user. Nobody worries that a long forum page on another tab or in their back button history is occupying 80 megs in the background or not, the browser takes care of loading/unloading it from RAM as needed, and that's just like how Android's VM works when switching between various pages of various apps.
Once you understand this you understand that all these 'task killer' apps are really unnecessary - all they'll do is make it slower to restart an app once closed. They don't reclaim RAM that was previously unavailable to other apps.
To cut a long story short, pressing "home" is a great way to close an app, whether you want to return to it later or not.
MercuryStar said:
Nobody worries that a long forum page on another tab or in their back button history is occupying 80 megs in the background or not, the browser takes care of loading/unloading it from RAM as needed, and that's just like how Android's VM works when switching between various pages of various apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that is not true for me, my firefox can eat a lot of resources as long as it is open. and i can see a performance difference when having a lot of apps open on my hero. not that it would be a problem, but you can see the menus scrolling more "fluid" after killing all bg apps, for example.
kendong2 said:
you can see the menus scrolling more "fluid" after killing all bg apps, for example.
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Click to collapse
I would wager that's the placebo effect. It feels faster because you believe it should. If you understand how the OS works you realise that apps you've switched away from do nothing to slow down or take memory from any other app (see my exception above about apps that launch background services such as music player).
kendong2 said:
that is not true for me, my firefox can eat a lot of resources as long as it is open. and i can see a performance difference when having a lot of apps open on my hero. not that it would be a problem, but you can see the menus scrolling more "fluid" after killing all bg apps, for example.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do notice this too. There is a general 'sluggishness' with my Hero when there are lots of app sleeping/running/hibernating/whatever in the background. As soon as I kill off a few unwanted ones, all the menus scroll faster and home screens change quicker.
And this is not the placebo effect either. The menu's DO scroll more fluidly after I have killed a few apps, regardless of how you describe the RAM management...
Micksta said:
And this is not the placebo effect either. The menu's DO scroll more fluidly after I have killed a few apps, regardless of how you describe the RAM management...
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Click to collapse
exactly, you can tell easily if it is one motion or looks like it is "skipping frames". even it is only because it takes the device some cpu cycles to kill other apps, it does make a difference. like i said a rather cosmetic one, since it doesn't really effect the general usage. nevertheless i like to know what is running and what's not, and so far im running good with advanced task manager free.
WOW i didnt expect a massive response for my question but i thank you all for your responses
MercuryStar said:
I would wager that's the placebo effect. It feels faster because you believe it should. If you understand how the OS works you realise that apps you've switched away from do nothing to slow down or take memory from any other app (see my exception above about apps that launch background services such as music player).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's not true, my phone gets so sluggish sometimes that i can't answer a phone call, the phone doesn't register that i press the answer button. and when that happends i usually have like 20 mb of free ram.
Daniehabazin said:
that's not true, my phone gets so sluggish sometimes that i can't answer a phone call, the phone doesn't register that i press the answer button. and when that happends i usually have like 20 mb of free ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just as a matter of interest, do you use swapper or AppsToSD?
My phone never gets into the situation you've described, but even though I do have the full version of TasKiller, I almost never use it, and I don't see a need at present to use AppsToSD.
In addition, I'd imagine that having a swap partition would cause an issue with Androids own memory management, since I guess it can't distinguish between real and "virtual" memory. So where a "non-swap" device would start killing processes, a "swap" device would just continue on regardless because it thinks it still has physical memory available.
Regards,
Dave
Yesterday I downloaded "Advanced Task Killer Free"... anyone who has experiences with this? Is is better than just "Task Killer" or is it just an updated version of "Task Killer" ?
thanks!
have been using atk free for a while (lol 2 weeks since i got the hero) now, i really like it. its advantage over all other task managers IMHO: it has an ignore list, things you ignore are not shown in the running tasks list. in the list you have check boxes, where you can select the tasks that will be killed, and this list is remembered. for example "htc sense" is on my ignore list, but "music" is only checked, so i can uncheck it when i don't want to kill it while listening to music. next time i want to kill music i just have to tap the checkbox, no dealing with the ignore list here...
Daniehabazin said:
that's not true, my phone gets so sluggish sometimes that i can't answer a phone call, the phone doesn't register that i press the answer button. and when that happends i usually have like 20 mb of free ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get this problem a lot, and in answer to fox meister, I don't have AppsToSD.
I don't know if the problem is RAM or CPU related, but the CPU often jumps to 100% when things are really slow.
Is the issue likely to be background apps, or widgets even?
Sausageman said:
I get this problem a lot, and in answer to fox meister, I don't have AppsToSD.
I don't know if the problem is RAM or CPU related, but the CPU often jumps to 100% when things are really slow.
Is the issue likely to be background apps, or widgets even?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same for me with the processor.
When i reboot my phone i usually have 90 mb of free ram, after starting a few applications, like browser and phonebook, it plummets down to 20 mb.
I do have some extra applications that starts as services, like systray monitor and 3g watchdog.
when i open atk after a fresh reboot i see that some applications that i don't even use is started, like footprints, settings and calendar, even my webrowser is started, whats up with that, can it be disabled?
I think the issue is that we have some applications that autostart withous us using them, and also programs that we download that autostarts as services and maybe having memory leaks...
I came to chime in with my experiences of the CDMA hero and sluggishness.
I watch memory like a hawk (thanks Mogul) and I too have around 80-90mb free ram on start, but it can get down to around 30 rather quickly. Once it gets down here, I notice that screen transitions and random lag occurs in apps. If I go into Advanced Task Killer and kill many of the stragglers, my menus are as smooth as can be.
It is most certainly NOT a placebo effect.
One thing I really like about Advanced Task Killer (pay version) is that it has the "Auto End" feature, where it will kill all apps not chosen to be excluded at the interval that you choose. For example, I have determined the system applications that need to be on all the time, and I've excluded those. Every hour, ATK kills everything else. For the most part, my Hero hovers around 70MB now at all times, although it can get down there to around 30-40MB if I'm right around the 1 hour mark.
That feature alone makes it much better than Taskiller IMO. Totally worth 99 cents
This definition would imply that android works exactly like the iphone osx? I mean saving "screenshots" of the last state of an app. But NOT having real multitasking?
Because it's not possible to have multitasking and at the same time "inactive" background apps everytime you hit the home button...
MercuryStar said:
I'll attempt to sum it up once and for all, to try and set the record straight.
In Android's virtual machine, there is no functional differentiation between "closing" an app and "switching away from" an app. They are the same (the exception is things like music players which need to keep playing after you switch away from them, but even then only the 'service' part needs to keep running).
Whenever you switch away from an app, its current state is remembered so that even if it is effectively "killed" it can be returned to in just that state next time it's opened. Then Android either kills the process or it keeps it open, killing it when it needs the memory. You won't notice any difference between either scenario, except maybe that an app loads a little bit faster if it was kept in memory. At any rate, "closed" apps do not "run", and they do not take RAM or CPU cycles from other apps.
In terms of process/memory management, Android's VM has more in common with a web browser than a desktop OS - sure it can remember your state when you switch apps (like switching tabs, going back/forward/home in a browser) but whether behind the scenes it loads it all into and out of memory when you switch back and forth, or it all stays in memory is irrelevant to the user. Nobody worries that a long forum page on another tab or in their back button history is occupying 80 megs in the background or not, the browser takes care of loading/unloading it from RAM as needed, and that's just like how Android's VM works when switching between various pages of various apps.
Once you understand this you understand that all these 'task killer' apps are really unnecessary - all they'll do is make it slower to restart an app once closed. They don't reclaim RAM that was previously unavailable to other apps.
To cut a long story short, pressing "home" is a great way to close an app, whether you want to return to it later or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Shahpur.Azizpour said:
This definition would imply that android works exactly like the iphone osx? I mean saving "screenshots" of the last state of an app. But NOT having real multitasking?
Because it's not possible to have multitasking and at the same time "inactive" background apps everytime you hit the home button...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you've not understood the explanation.
The iPhone will always* terminate an application that isn't on its list of "approved" multi-tasking apps once it isn't active any more (i.e. you've switched tasks).
Android will try to keep whatever it can in memory, but eventually will start killing processes in order to keep the system running.
So, if you're on an iPhone listening to something on Spotify and you want to browse something on the web, the iPhone will "kill" Spotify when you switch to the web browser. On Android this won't occur except in the most critical of resource low situations, but then again, I'd imagine other apps would get killed before Spotify.
Read this article, specifically the section from "Component Lifecycles" onwards specifically "Activity Lifecycle", "Saving activity state" and "Processes and lifecycles".
Regards,
Dave
* Unless it has been jailbroken!
I found a way to improve the performance of our rom, at least I noticed more quickly and smoothly and browsers do not fail me so much with flash player on Youtube or other sites. First install "Lite Panel System" to check at any time and memory performance, then "Root Uninstaller Pro" and remove all standard applications that come installed on the rom and that you require, we can also freeze them and then uninstall them.
And here comes the most important, to improve performance (at least I have noticed, you will have to try if you want), is called "Autostarts" the instaláis and when you open your show all the processes that are spending some unnecessary memory and battery feed: mad:, give to the three dots at the top right and Group by application, then you will see Expand all processes and applications, android system I least, I have them all canceled, to cancel the process on the dais and disable, accept, is a somewhat laborious work because you have to do it all but I have told you but I have not checked if annulling gmail, come new message alerts, but if you will not anuleis.
bonampi htc mania
Firstly, I'm a non-root user of Greenify. When I first installed it (over a year ago, I believe), I was able to add most of my apps to hibernation (by hitting the "+" button and then "show all apps", then "More" at the bottom, and then choosing the apps from there. I admit, I have many apps installed (I know, it's not great and I tend to collect apps more than I use them but that's why I installed Greenify) so once I went to hibernate all those apps, it would take a bit but eventually go through with the additions. From then on, I would periodically add newly installed apps to the hibernation protocol through the same routine (+, Show all apps, More). I hadn't installed new apps for awhile until recently, when I decided to do another round of additions but for the past few months, any time I've tried, I get the loading circle for a second before it freezes and nothing happens - I have to close the app and reopen it only to run into the same issue again. I can hibernate the apps previously added with the widget and from the app itself but I can't add any new ones to the hibernation list. I've tried multiple times and even let my phone sit there with the frozen spinny circle to see if it just needs time to load but after 5 whole minutes of waiting, I had to give up. I do have a lot of apps but most of them have been given the hibernation treatment so the remaining pool of apps to be added to the list should be relatively small and when I choose the option to "hibernate system apps", system apps show up in the list when I hit the "+" (although I haven't added any system apps to the hibernate list for fear I could mess with my phone's functionality) but I when I hit the "More" option at the bottom, it does the same spinny-circle freeze thing again and marking or not marking "show all apps" makes no difference. I have a Galaxy S8, update to Oreo 8.0 so I'm wondering if this is an issue I'm running into because of the update, but I think I had this problem before joining the Beta. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I also have the donation package - I've had it since shortly after installing Greenify and there weren't any problems since then before the last few months. Thanks!
ActionGabby said:
Firstly, I'm a non-root user of Greenify. When I first installed it (over a year ago, I believe), I was able to add most of my apps to hibernation (by hitting the "+" button and then "show all apps", then "More" at the bottom, and then choosing the apps from there. I admit, I have many apps installed (I know, it's not great and I tend to collect apps more than I use them but that's why I installed Greenify) so once I went to hibernate all those apps, it would take a bit but eventually go through with the additions. From then on, I would periodically add newly installed apps to the hibernation protocol through the same routine (+, Show all apps, More). I hadn't installed new apps for awhile until recently, when I decided to do another round of additions but for the past few months, any time I've tried, I get the loading circle for a second before it freezes and nothing happens - I have to close the app and reopen it only to run into the same issue again. I can hibernate the apps previously added with the widget and from the app itself but I can't add any new ones to the hibernation list. I've tried multiple times and even let my phone sit there with the frozen spinny circle to see if it just needs time to load but after 5 whole minutes of waiting, I had to give up. I do have a lot of apps but most of them have been given the hibernation treatment so the remaining pool of apps to be added to the list should be relatively small and when I choose the option to "hibernate system apps", system apps show up in the list when I hit the "+" (although I haven't added any system apps to the hibernate list for fear I could mess with my phone's functionality) but I when I hit the "More" option at the bottom, it does the same spinny-circle freeze thing again and marking or not marking "show all apps" makes no difference. I have a Galaxy S8, update to Oreo 8.0 so I'm wondering if this is an issue I'm running into because of the update, but I think I had this problem before joining the Beta. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I also have the donation package - I've had it since shortly after installing Greenify and there weren't any problems since then before the last few months. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may have to go through a tedious process. Clear the data and cache of Greenify, uninstall it, reboot and then reinstall it. Grant the necessary permissions through adb. Then choose all the apps that you want to hibernate. Other than this, I don't think that there is any other way to solve your issue.
Be aware that backing up and restoring the settings of Greenify may also restore the issue you are facing.
tnsmani said:
You may have to go through a tedious process. Clear the data and cache of Greenify, uninstall it, reboot and then reinstall it. Grant the necessary permissions through adb. Then choose all the apps that you want to hibernate. Other than this, I don't think that there is any other way to solve your issue.
Be aware that backing up and restoring the settings of Greenify may also restore the issue you are facing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also recommend being judicious about what apps are added to Greenify's action list. With the introduction of doze Android does a pretty good job reigning in resource abusers. Adding a huge portfolio of apps to Greenify has few/no upsides and can potentially lead to greater resource consumption and poor overall device behavior. Greenify is best used for targeted action against demonstrated 'bad actors' that do not respond well to native resource management. On Oreo your list of Greenified apps should be quite small.
Tl;dr: Skip down to the bolded parts of paragraphs 4 and 5.
I had this very question, and have seen other people post inside numerous threads asking about the same thing. If you're unfamiliar, the Device Care is baked right into your phone with a near identical feature-set to the root-only app Greenify.
Device Care learns your app usage patterns, what apps you use, how often. Which apps you don't use, or which apps are at risk for draining your battery. From there, it will automatically sleep or disable these apps. They can still be used, but you may not receive push notifications; you weren't using them anyways, so most people appreciate this feature, and are not bothered by it.
However, I have many apps that are plugins, things I sporadically use, or apps that I want to ensure are never impeded by battery saving features. In Nougat and Oreo, the Device Care app had a section that said "Unmonitored Apps." You could add apps for this section that you did not want to ever be closed or out to sleep to save power.
In Pie, this section was removed, but the whitelist still exists. Here's what happened, Decide Care battery saving features somewhat overlap Dose. Rather than maintain two different "never optimize these apps for battery usage," they instead pull from the Doze's Optimize Battery Use whitelist. Find this number going to Settings->Search->Optimize battery->Tap, tap again. Adding an app here, prevents you from adding that same app to the "Always Sleeping" section of Device Care, thus demonstrating that this list is the new home for the "Unmonitored Apps" section.
A new whitelist was also created, focused on background apps. Device Care now offers by default to Auto Care everyday, this cleans up temp files and closes background apps. Apps aren't actually force closed though, instead their UI activity is closed, and the service (if one exists) stays running. A whitelist was created for this Auto Care feature. Found in Device Care->Memory->Menu->Apps that aren't checked.
Cheers!
What is Device Care? Is it only for pie? I have 8.0.0 still btw.
I never would have found that
Thanks for this!
I'm confused. There seems to be 2 separate lists. Device care/unmonitored apps and special access/optimize battery usage.
Device Care->Memory->Menu->Apps that aren't checked seems to only apply to apps that are using too much memory.
Settings->Apps->Menu->Special Access->Optimize battery usage (or search for Optimize battery). Then change the dropdown menu from Apps not optimized to All apps to turn off battery optimization for certain apps. This section seems to apply to apps that use mobile networks or sync data (I think this is the one that used to be called doze).
When I set my VPN app to not be checked under the device care/unmonitored apps list, I was still getting notifications to shut it down for "background data usage". Then I went to the to special access/optimize battery usage list and disabled it there as well.
But here is the problem. I have also installed my VPN app in the secure folder. The device care/unmonitored apps list included the secure folder apps but the special access/optimize battery usage does not include app in the secure folder. So I don't see any way to disable battery optimization for my VPN app in the secure folder.
So confusing!
Hello, it is really nice info, although doesn't seem to work for me... The app in my case is EyeDTV, which is for watching TV from EyeTV from my Mac, and it goes to sleep anyway... It doesn't work at all at least in my s10+