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Let’s settle it: should you still close your background apps on Android?

Published: Jul 29, 2024, 9:38 AM

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Let’s settle it: should you still close your background apps on Android?

Recently I watched another techfluencer tell me “Ten things that I didn’t know about my Android phone” and I had a physical and verbal reaction to one of those. I’m paraphrasing here, but it went a little something like this:

You don’t actually need to close the apps running in the background, because Android phones are optimized to stay efficient even when there’s a bunch of apps opened up. In fact, it may even save you some battery life, because keeping them open means that your phone will need to do less when you need to run them again, as they will already be partially loaded up.

Now hold on just a second. That’s technically true — such claims exist in Android’s documentation. But is it practically true too?

Listen, I’ve spent the majority of my life as a smartphone owner on Android’s side and if there’s one thing that I’ve always preached and practiced: it’s a clean app drawer. If I don’t need it: I closeit. And I’ve had a pretty good experience thus far.

I remember back when Android 8 rolled around, making me want to munch on Oreos, and it boasted it’s “real time resource management system”. It would apparently be clever enough to tell what apps I need and don’t need to use, based on my habits, so that I can have the utmost optimal Android experience.

So that was a load of hogwash and I ended up closing everything anyway, because this system did the exact opposite of what it strived for in 90% of the time. In fact, it was so bad in the early days, that I had to manually go and disable the process, because it kept flushing out apps that I needed to stay open throughout the day.

Well, case closed then! It has been tested: I am right — they are wrong, and that’s that! Sure, but… my last tests were back in 2018. We’re waiting on Android 15 now, which is 6 versions after Oreo. I mean: it’s only fair to check again.

Let’s settle this then: are Android’s claim that it can optimize background app performance for you true, or should you stick to closing all those background apps that you don’t need?

The super-scientific testing methods to my madness

The Pixel 6a was my subject of choice. | Image credit — PhoneArena

Jokes aside, I kind of think I’m in the perfect position to test something like this out. And I don’t just mean that I’m working for PhoneArena. I’m pretty Android-savvy and I’m currently equipped with the Pixel 6a. But why is that a good thing?

Well, this smartphone isn’t old, but isn’t new anymore either. It’s not a flagship, but closer to a midrange contender, which on the whole sounds like about what most people have in their pockets. Oh, and also: it’s made by Google, the guys behind Android itself. In my mind, that should mean that the OS should be as optimized as it can be for this hardware level. Makes sense, right?

Okay then: the process. I’m going to monitor my phone usage for an entire week, making notes along the way. I’ll do my best to not close background apps anytime when that is not necessary. And if you’re reading this, you may already have figured out that, yes, indeed: it became mandatory at a point, but we’ll get there.

I went pretty hard on note-taking during this last week, but I won’t bore you with the details. In short, I took notes on:

How the phone’s performance feels
Battery percentage at different times of the day
Odd or atypical behavior to what I’m used to

Keep in mind: I have used this phone as a daily driver in the last couple of years, so I’m pretty well acquainted with its shenanigans. Speaking of, I should give you the general gist on how I usually operate my phone:

I charge my phone overnight, so my day begins at 8AM with 100% battery capacity.
I keep the always on display on at all times and when it’s unlocked, my phone is set to about 35% brightness throughout the majority of my day.
I keep the following toggles on at all times: Wi-Fi, Data, Bluetooth and Location services.
I typically keep at least the following apps open at all times: Chrome, Messenger, WhatsApp and Google Keep.
I conclude my day between 11PM and 1AM with about 25-35% of battery life on average. I almost never charge my phone throughout the day.
○ And if you’re shocked by that revelation, I remind you that I’ve also written an article on Android maintenance, which you can (and should) read.

PS: For those who have already read it: I’ve not put into practice any of these tips for the duration of this experiment.

Ultimately, what I want to figure out is if keeping my apps open in the background can get in the way of me using my phone as intended on a daily basis. My goal is to be able to spit out a claim that I can actually get behind, so I can settle this debate once and for all.

Fun fact: I spend about 4 minutes per day manually closing apps. That totals up to 24 minutes per week, or: almost two hours per month. Honestly, I’m excited about Android proving me wrong on this one, because I’d love to have that time back to do other things like touching grass and drinking tea.

The experiment

I’m bummed that the visor will be going away with the Pixel 9 series. | Image credit — PhoneArena

Day 1: things are heating up

Other than me closing a game and the Reddit app by accident that one time, the day went by just like any other. I didn’t note any major differences in battery drain, but it was also a Monday. That means it was a pretty busy day, so I didn’t use my phone that much until the evening rolled around.

Which is when I noticed that my phone was hotter than usual, in a literal sense. I mean, I’d say “warmer”, but the sensation was closer to “searing” than “pleasant”.

After some brainstorming, I concluded that my phone needed to remain locked for a bit of time — about 20 minutes or so— before it could figure out that it’s okay to flush out my last used apps. Only after that was done did it begin to cool down.

Overall, this was a bit surprising for me, because this was actually the first time during this summer season — the hottest one ever recorded for my country and region, sadly — when my phone actually heated up. What’s more interesting is that this happened on one of the notably cooler days.

What a strange coincidence for this to be happening on the day where I left all my apps open in the background, huh?

Day 2: revelations

So, overnight, my phone seems to have figured something out, because when I picked it up for the first time on Tuesday, it had done something, which it had never done before.

it had closed apps overnight on its own.

Granted, it had closed some of the ones that I actually use too and it had left my photo gallery open (which I rarely use), but hey: things are happening! I didn’t immediately proceed to re-open anything. Sticking to ground rules, I would open apps up only if I need them, but I’d leave them open forever if that happens.

Which is where I hit a brick wall: one of the cross-play games I enjoy in my off time had issues with transferring my save data over to PC when I kept the app open. I had to break protocol and close it manually, lest my precious farming session would be in vain. Other than that, it was business as usual. I used my phone more than the previous day, yet I didn’t feel any issues related to battery or performance. Oh, and my phone didn’t explode, which was great.

Day 3: the one where my phone almost caught fire

My phone had yet again closed apps while I was snoozing, but this time the selection was… Odd. One of the apps that it had, in its infinite wisdom, left open was the game that I mentioned above, which is literally the most resource-intensive app I’ve got installed.

I don’t know what the phone based that of, given that I almost never open the mobile version up and if I do, it’s for some quick, menial task, after which I always close it off. Interestingly, the other app it left open was Reddit, which I had indeed spent a lot of time on yesterday, so maybe there’s a connection there?

Anyway, at about 1PM my phone kind of, sort of told me that it’s about to explode. Check this out:

I didn’t think that there was an Android error that I hadn’t seen before. | Image credit — PhoneArena

I had never, in my entire life, seen a warning such as this on my phone or another.

Now, it is summer and typically, the season in my area is quite hot, but again: this was a much cooler period than recent times. At the time, I was on a video call, which took 28 minutes, but I’ve been on way, way longer video conferences, through my Pixel 6a in the past, so that’s not anything new.

What is new, however, is that I had a bunch of apps opened up in the background.

So here’s what I did to prevent my phone from experiencing a meltdown:

Took off its case.
Used some cardboard to make a little stand with airflow beneath it.
Put the phone on top.
Didn’t touch it for the next 30 minutes.

And hey, it worked. But it was still a pretty usage-intensive day, so come nightfall, I was watching House of the Dragon when I saw that the phone was losing about 3% of battery per 5 seconds. I had more than ten apps opened at the same time, in the background. So I just gave up and left my phone alone for the rest of the night.

At this point, though, I couldn’t help but feel as if there is a correlation between phone performance and the number of apps you keep open in the background.

Also, can we take a moment to comment on how the message above says "Pixel will try to cool your phone down..."? I mean, isn't my phone the Pixel? What is the Pixel if not my smartphone? Is it some sort of chthonic, digital entity, inhabiting all Google-made devices?

Day 4: am I being spied on?

Another day, another round of apps closed. This time, however, it was peak random. Today, Android closed that same game mentioned above, but it left all of my social media apps open, which made me feel like I was being spied on as per user agreement.

For the record: I never keep my social media apps open, so there is literally no reason for Android to assume that I would need them to kickstart my day.

The weirdest part, however, was that the little Pixel that could decided to close Chrome, which is literally the only app I have open at all times besides Keep. Other than that, the day went pretty much the same as the first couple of days: nothing out of the ordinary happened and I barely used my phone throughout.

Day 5: I actually need my phone today

For those of you keeping score: everything but Chrome and Instagram was closed, which is, again, a mixed-bag. I had a photography gig on this day, which I needed my phone for.

I was pretty psyched to see if my experiment would get in the way of me getting the job done and—well, would you look at that, we barely got started and it was already getting in the way.

It seems that for resource-intensive, real-time tasks, keeping your background apps open isn’t a good idea. I mean, how could it be? My phone still needed about half an hour to figure out what was okay to flush and what it should keep active in the background: this hadn’t changed, even after days of use.

And, bear in mind, for the duration of those 30-ish minutes, you get to experience the joyous bliss that comes with heating and lag. So this is where I drew the line and just abandoned the experiment for the rest of the day.

I kind of don’t want to say this yet, but… At the end of the day, after hours of taking snaps and videos, and after being awake until 3AM, because I was at a music fest, my phone was doing fine: no lag or heat, now that all background apps were manually closed.

I concluded the day with 28% of battery, with no in-between charging sessions.

Day 6: skip

I’ll be honest with you guys: after being awake ‘till 3AM last night, I just slept through half of Saturday. When I woke up, I got ready for another day of live performances. I barely used my phone: just lite messaging and some pics for the “Memories of 2024” folder.

Day 7: details, details

Today was going to be a phone-intense day and given my recent discoveries, I was pretty okay with closing apps and just using my phone as I would on any other day. So I decided to offer you my more detailed notes regarding my status on Saturday, so that you can get a better idea of how things went down:

8AM, 100%: I woke up and browsed for vacation ideas and caught up with the Olympic games while drinking my morning cup of coffee.
9AM, 100%: Just for the record, still reading. While it is interesting to see that I’m still at max charge after an hour of lite browsing, it is important to remember that our phones have a tendency to keep higher numbers for longer, while depleting more rapidly when the capacity dips below 30%. Don’t ask me why, but TL;DR: it’s fine to blame Apple for it.
11AM, 95%: I’m sticking to my usual habits and I have Messenger, WhatsApp, Chrome and Keep opened in the background.
2PM, 90%: Didn’t use my phone much since the last checkpoint, but the aforementioned apps remained open in the background. This amounts to about 5% of passive battery drain per 3 hours of standby. I’d say: not great, not terrible.
3PM, 75%: I did my dailies in the two games I play, which took about 30 minutes. I closed both apps as soon as I was done with them.
6PM, 54%: I used Google Maps to navigate to another photography gig’s location, which was outside of town. Then I used my phone to take about 35 snaps. My phone was actively in use, as in: unlocked, for about an hour since the last checkpoint.
8PM, 35%: I retouch my shots on my phone too, which means that I managed about 70 files across four apps, after which I transferred the resulting fourteen images to my PC wirelessly over WiFI. Given the results, I’m completely fine with spending about 20% of battery on this, especially considering that my screen brightness was set to 100% for the editing session.
11PM, 27%: I went to bed. Only Messenger, WhatsApp, Chrome and Keep are open in the background.

So, should we close our background apps on Android?

I honestly can’t imagine any other outcome, regardless of phone of choice. | Image credit — PhoneArena

I think that it’s safe to say that I’m still right and that Android hasn’t gotten that much better with managing apps in the background. That said, though, do most smartphone users even need anything more?

Here’s the gist of it, in all fairness:

Leaving Android to manage smaller apps like instant messaging services or note-taking solutions should be completely fine. Why? Well, in most cases, they take up so few resources that you’re not likely to feel any difference anyway. Now, could this practice lead to you saving some battery life? I seriously doubt it and even if it was the case: I’d not wager on it being more than 5%, tops. As long as you’re not running an older Android phone, closing off smaller apps shouldn’t be a priority.

For bigger, resource-hungry apps, however, like graphically impressive games, 4K recording sessions or GPS-based services, I’d advise you to stick to those two extra swipes and close them off. If I have to be honest, I think that this is where the majority of performance issues come from. If you can’t afford to leave your phone alone for half an hour, then closing these off manually is the right way to go, if you’re interested in smooth, cool performance.

All in all: so long as you don’t trust Android to truly understand which apps you want it to wake you up with, you should be fine. Making a habit of closing off huge games and RAM-hungry apps, however, is still a must in 2024.

Let’s be honest here for a moment, though: if Google trusted Android to get the job done perfectly, would we even still have the option to go into the app switcher to manually close apps off? I don’t think so.

Then again, we must remember that Android is a very impressive operating system, capable of executing an astounding amount of hidden tasks, all the while providing top-notch performance. There is no such thing as a “flawless” OS, but even with its nitpicks: there’s a reason for Android to be at the top of people’s preference lists.

What I’m curious about, though, is if the rise of AI may actually improve the situation. Think about it: an AI-powered Android should be capable of better understanding your habits, so who's to say if things won't be drastically improved soon. Maybe in Android 15, why not?

That said: please do let me know what you thought about my experiment. Should I have done something different? And more importantly: should I repeat the process with some other device to measure how it stacks up against this case? Or should I wait for Android 15 and then repeat the same steps once more?

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Stan, also known as Stako, is a smartphone enthusiast who loves exploring the limits of Android customization. His journey with mobile tech began with the Nokia 5110 and evolved with devices like the BlackBerry 9350 Curve and Samsung Galaxy A4. Despite his love for Android, he holds equal respect for Apple, considering the iPhone 4s as a significant milestone in mobile tech. Stan started his writing career early, contributing to MetalWorld, and harbors a passion for creative writing. Beyond smartphones, he's interested in photography, design, composition, and gaming, often preferring solo projects to hone his objective thinking. He's also an avid student of open-source technology and consoles, with a special fondness for the Pebble Watch, Arduboy, and Playdate.