Are you constantly closing open apps on your Android phone? Do you think this helps it's performance? But things are not exactly like that. Let's see why.
Many people believe that constantly closing background apps on their Android phone will increase its performance. Misconceptions like this had some validity in the early days of Android, but the landscape has changed dramatically since then.
In fact, you can do more harm than good if you regularly close apps on your Android device. Let's take a look at why this is.
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Close apps on your Android phone
Before we get into the details, let's make sure we're all on the same page about what we mean by “close applications".
Depending on your phone brand and Android version, you can view open apps in your phone's app switcher by doing one of the following two steps:
- Drag your finger to the middle of your screen and hold.
- By pressing the square navigation button at the bottom of your screen.
Now that you've opened the app switcher, you'll see all the apps running in the background.
There are two main ways to close these apps. You can swipe left or right on each app individually to close them one by one, or tap “Delete All” to close all running apps at once (this is usually shown at the end of the list with a big X).
If needed, you can also go to the app management menu ( Settings > Apps. View the running apps, one by one, and force close them from there.
Why you shouldn't close apps on Android
Many reasons prove that it is counterproductive to regularly close your Android apps. Let's go through a list of these reasons in detail and dispel some myths related to Android performance.
1. Closing Android apps doesn't increase your phone's battery life
It's natural to think that background apps are constantly draining your phone's battery. However, these apps are not the cause of your battery drain and frequently closing them will not increase your phone's battery life.
Android has evolved over the years and advanced battery management features, the such as Doze, don't let background apps negatively affect your phone's battery life. These possibilities they put your background apps into a kind of hibernation where each app's CPU and internet usage is minimal.
2. Your Android phone won't run foreground apps faster
Another myth is that if you stop background apps, then foreground apps run faster. Unfortunately, this is not true, as Android manages the μνήμη Your RAM intelligently, while keeping many applications in memory. It doesn't let these apps affect your phone's performance.
Additionally, when you reopen an app that Android kept in RAM, it will appear right after it was already in memory. So your phone will be more responsive if you let apps run in the background. There's no point in constantly closing apps when you're going to reopen them moments later.
3. Closing apps consumes more CPU power
If you keep closing and restarting apps, your phone's CPU will have to spend energy each time processing these commands.
As your applications are better off staying in memory, running the CPU on these commands is a waste of processing power. Additionally, many apps restart a background process even after you close the main app. So there is no point in trying to close them again and again.
4. Regularly closing and restarting apps consumes more battery
When you do repetitive commands you cause your phone's processor to consume power, such as launching an app and then closing it. This process will definitely consume more battery in the process.
Let's say your goal behind closing background apps is to save battery life. In this case, you should take other battery-saving actions, such as lowering the brightness, turning off notifications, or switching to mode energy saving. These are methods that will really help you save battery.
5. Background apps won't affect much mobile data telephony
You can limit background data for specific Android apps if you want to save on their usage. After all, half-asleep background apps don't use much data anyway.
In Settings > Apps > Manage apps, Android gives you options to limit how apps use data, notifications, and battery. It will be better to set these restrictions for peace of mind for the future.
6. Your Android phone will automatically close unnecessary apps
Android has become smart enough to understand which apps should keep running and which should be closed. The memory management algorithm works in such a way that it removes unused applications from memory in case the RAM becomes full.
In other words, your Android phone will automatically take care of itself. You don't need to keep clearing apps from memory to increase your device's performance. Modern versions of Android are smart enough to know which apps you use all the time and which ones are not a priority.
When should you close apps on Android?
There are definitely exceptions, where it's a good idea to close some apps on Android. An important exception is when one or more of your apps have crashed or frozen. In such a case, closing these apps is your immediate solution.
Just to clarify, what we mentioned above is in no way inconsistent with a frozen Android app. This is because the purpose of your action is to refresh this application by closing and restarting it.
Another situation where closing an app would make sense is when you're done using a "heavy" app, such as games or applications navigation, running in the background. These apps tend to require a lot of memory even in the background.
You can also close some apps you don't need to organize your app rotation schedule. Managing multiple apps in the app switcher can be difficult, and finding a single app among the many can be difficult.
Avoid closing apps to increase the efficiency of your Android phone
A general logic about constantly closing Android apps is that you should avoid doing so as much as possible. It would be best to close apps only in the cases mentioned above.
Additionally, closing background apps will negatively affect your phone's battery life and overall performance. The benefits that you want to gain by killing background apps is easily achievable using Android's powerful settings for its other processes.
Android is a great operating system that counts on running apps in the background.
