I'm using Cyanogenmod 6 (stable) on my HTC Dream.
Now, I know that there's been a change in Froyo (Android 2.2) whereby task manager apps can no longer kill running apps. That's fine. I can kill tasks in Running Services if I want. (Although I wish I had a faster way of accessing the Running Services...)
Anyways, I'm noticing that I'm having a problem with apps being closed by the system when I definitely never want them closing unless I close them myself. I was able to do this just fine in pre-Froyo ... but there are really some apps, like AndChat, that I don't want closing at any odd random time (I'm guessing this happens when the system decides it needs to free up some RAM or something). Is there a way to keep certain apps ALWAYS running unless I close them?
Please tell me there's a way to do this. I'm loving Froyo otherwise, but there are some apps that I don't want the system closing on its own.
Please tell me there's a way around this. I never had this problem pre-Froyo.
Can I maybe prioritize non-essential processes or something (So that maybe it'd close some other app instead of the one or two I want to keep running)?
Please help
If you do, then whatever you are trying to do that causes those processes to be killed will NOT WORK. You will get the magical disappearing application problem where a newly launched program will randomly die. It could get really messy if there isn't enough free memory to load the launcher -- you'll end up in battery munching loops at seemingly random times.
*sighs*
That's just ... sad. I understand what you're saying. I do hope there's still another way though. I really try not to have much running. But sometimes even if all I have running is AndChat and a browser, AndChat would close. It's really annoying.
Thanks for your reply.
The most annoying thing to me about the way FroYo manages apps is that my browser will often close when not being used, and upon returning to it only the last page displayed will reload but any other windows that were open do not.
This never happened in 2.1
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Related
Seems the N1 has memory management issues. Instead of constantly closing apps to free up memory or have some app try to manage things, be nice to just kill the thing on exit. Any app that will auto-kill when an app exits?
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
It would be nice to have, say, long press back key to kill the current app.
Big_O said:
Seems the N1 has memory management issues. Instead of constantly closing apps to free up memory or have some app try to manage things, be nice to just kill the thing on exit. Any app that will auto-kill when an app exits?
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You obviously didn't search for this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=678205
You DON'T need to intervene with N1 memory management, since you don't know how it works. You assume wrong. And most bad gossips are created by people wrongly assuming something, thinking they know something while they actually don't.
My N1 runs equally well with 40MB and 250MB free. The only reason I use a task killer is to kill apps that I want to return to their "initial" state for some reason, or to kill apps that I suspect of wrongdoing.
Exactly, the nexus has no memory management issues. It is just your misunderstanding of how Android works. Leave your tasks alone.
If you have one or two particular apps that are bad citizens and should be shutting down in the background but don't... you can use "1Kill" from the market to create a home screen shortcut that kills that specific app when you press it.
Fring used to be a bad citizen - it would lock my wifi on even when I didn't want to be using it, and had no exit feature. So I'd always have to kill it after finishing up with it. Now it does have a proper exit, thankfully.
Jack_R1 said:
My N1 runs equally well with 40MB and 250MB free. The only reason I use a task killer is to kill apps that I want to return to their "initial" state for some reason, or to kill apps that I suspect of wrongdoing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ditto!
1 app running or 50 apps running they all still run the same.
I find it even funnier how iOS4 users in Apple-land are suddenly freaking out that so many applications appear to be open "in the background" and complaining that they have to spend so much time "killing" apps.
Big_O said:
Seems the N1 has memory management issues. Instead of constantly closing apps to free up memory or have some app try to manage things, be nice to just kill the thing on exit. Any app that will auto-kill when an app exits?
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you have the memory management issues.
Before anyone gets tarred and feathered, that explains why many users on unrooted stock roms ha e frequent touchscreen lockups, hesitation and freezes. Guess theres a reason why the market has so many task killers. Maybe the devs should read this thread also lol. Instead of flaming, positive feedback is appreciated. I did search, but its a bit time consuming sifting through 5000 posts. Maybe you guys o rooted phones have no lockups, but google shows an azzload of people with similar issues.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
1) You've been given some answers in the thread, if you cared to look.
2) App that loses focus goes to background. That's the way OS is built. If you want apps to be killed on losing focus, get iOS 3 to run on your device. Seriously, what kind of answer would you expect, if you want to turn multitasking OS into non-multitasking?
3) The market has task killers because they can be written for multitasking OS, and because they help dealing with bad apps. Not for any other reason.
4) The OS loads some of your most used tasks when it runs, even if you don't know about it. Just loads in the memory, and allocates no CPU time. If you leave your phone unattended, your free memory goes down by itself. Why? Because free memory is wasted memory. You can check the "EMPTY" processes in Astro, for example.
5) The best task killer is careful selection of your apps. You see hangups? Find out the app that's doing it and remove it, or kill it specifically after running if it's necessary.
6) Task killers are a good source of lockups and freezes too, did you know? I guess you didn't read that thread...
All this meant to say: instead of looking for a way to cripple your OS, learn to select your apps, and don't solve issues that you don't have.
cmstlist said:
I find it even funnier how iOS4 users in Apple-land are suddenly freaking out that so many applications appear to be open "in the background" and complaining that they have to spend so much time "killing" apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I think Apple needs to tweak their multi-tasking still. I've played with my gf's iPhone a bit this week, and it's a little annoying how now you have to explicitly quit every app. For example, with the Settings app if I go to change a preference quickly then return to home Settings app is still in the running apps list. I think little utilities like that should be able to quit themselves automatically.
I know the app isn't wasting memory or CPU down there, but I just don't see why you would want it cluttering up your app switcher forever.
Oh well, it's progress though. At least now you don't have to quit everything else you're doing to listen to Pandora
well android does the same thing. if you go into the settings menu, then hit home button, the settings is still running in the background. of course andoird will kill it later when it needs to.
Hello all,
I recently bought my N1 about 4 days ago. So far its been great. Easily one of the best phones I've ever owned. However, I am having this problem where apps in android seem to startup by themselves. I'm using Advanced Task killer to kill em but ill kill them and then like a minute later they're back up and running without me starting them. Its quite annoying as my battery is taking a beating from it having to close and open apps and repeat. The biggest offenders of this are the voice apps such as voice search, voice dialer, Google voice (which isn't even setup), and the amazon mp3 store. A few third party apps I downloaded tend to do this as well.
Have any of you guys experienced this? Is there any way to fix it? Thanks in advance! XD
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
decoyjoe said:
Hello all,
I recently bought my N1 about 4 days ago. So far its been great. Easily one of the best phones I've ever owned. However, I am having this problem where apps in android seem to startup by themselves. I'm using Advanced Task killer to kill em but ill kill them and then like a minute later they're back up and running without me starting them. Its quite annoying as my battery is taking a beating from it having to close and open apps and repeat. The biggest offenders of this are the voice apps such as voice search, voice dialer, Google voice (which isn't even setup), and the amazon mp3 store. A few third party apps I downloaded tend to do this as well.
Have any of you guys experienced this? Is there any way to fix it? Thanks in advance! XD
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do not worry about app running in the background, what you are probably seeing is the list of what was run, Android is verry good at managing memory, in fact I do not even use a task manager and I am fine with it.
Well that's the thing. Some of these apps that startup I have never run such as the mp3 store. So I close it and I get an additional 10megs of memory. But then it just starts back up. So I don't know how to stop it all together.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
There are apps that automatically run in the background but don't effect performance like Google voice voice dialer etc..what I did was add them to the ignore list. Trust me those apps are always running no matter how many times you close them
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Like has already been said, stop worrying about it. Those apps are NOT stealing memory, they're NOT using battery.
Free memory does not benefit you. Android will automatically load apps in to memory so that they are available to switch to fast as possible.
You should not kill apps unless they are bisbehaving. Killing off apps forces Android to load them back into memory if its algorithm thinks you are likely to use it. The act of loading data into memory uses power and Android tries hard to avoid it.
I was obsessed with managing my memory and running apps when I bought my nexus one. Everyone at that time suggested task killers so I got one of those. I had crappy performance with random sluggishness. I figured I just needed to kill off more apps. Eventually I read an article from an Android dev explaining this stuff and I backed off and have had a much better experience since.
I wish Google was more vocal on this subject. Everyone thinking auto task killing is a necessity on Android really gives it a black eye.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=712352
Jack_R1 said:
...
2) App that loses focus goes to background. That's the way OS is built. If you want apps to be killed on losing focus, get iOS 3 to run on your device.
3) The market has task killers because they can be written for multitasking OS, and because they help dealing with bad apps. Not for any other reason.
4) The OS loads some of your most used tasks when it runs, even if you don't know about it. Just loads in the memory, and allocates no CPU time. If you leave your phone unattended, your free memory goes down by itself. Why? Because free memory is wasted memory. You can check the "EMPTY" processes in Astro, for example.
5) The best task killer is careful selection of your apps. You see hangups? Find out the app that's doing it and remove it, or kill it specifically after running if it's necessary.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=678205
Remove your task killer (or, if you insist, just clear the auto-kill list), erase all you think you know about memory management - because you don't know - and stop worrying.
Why do several apps randomly start up?
It feels like I constantly have to open task killer and kill over a dozen apps even when my phone hasn't been touched since the last time I killed almost the exact same list of apps.
Att Navigator, stocks, countdown, etc. seem to be the regular culprits. Any help with this situation would be awesome.
I've noticed the same thing on my Aria. AT&T Navigator always restarts by itself and I've never even used it. So I just set ATK to auto kill.
Look at the sync settings and you can disable things you dont need (News, stocks etc)
A "Running" app behaves differently on android. The app may be "Running" but it is also "Sleeping" which means that it may not be using any resources (battery, cpu, etc).
Using a task killer may actually be hurting your performance and battery life.
http://androidspin.com/2010/05/25/why-you-dont-need-a-task-killer-app-with-android/
I just check the running apps on my Aria and I understand why every single one is running. AT&T Nav is NOT running. You should check all the widgets you are using, having the widget on the home screen start app automatically.
If you're rooted....
I can't tell you why it does it, but I can tell you how to stop it. If you're rooted, spend the $.89 (approx.) for Autostarts. One of the best programs I've installed.
I was having the same issue, I use AT&T Nav, but it always seemed to show up on the task list even when I hadn't started it. For whatever reason, it's set to start whenever you get a text message! With Autostarts I was able to stop it (along with many other things).
Best of luck to you!
armyengineer51 said:
I can't tell you why it does it, but I can tell you how to stop it. If you're rooted, spend the $.89 (approx.) for Autostarts. One of the best programs I've installed.
I was having the same issue, I use AT&T Nav, but it always seemed to show up on the task list even when I hadn't started it. For whatever reason, it's set to start whenever you get a text message! With Autostarts I was able to stop it (along with many other things).
Best of luck to you!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One caveat to this, BE CAREFUL. This is a powerful program and it will let you stop just about any service/program on your phone. You could really do some damage if you don't watch it.
Hi all,
1. I've got these applications (Smartone-Vodophone SV app, 5 days weather, google map, social hub and such) that would keep coming back, relaunching themselves even after I put them onto my task manager's autokill list. Seems like they would wait around for me to enable the wifi/3G connection and then launch themselves. I even installed other apps to disable autolaunch and they would still launch themselves in the background every now and then. I had to kill them every time I unlocked my screen and these "launching and killing" cycles eventually depleted my memory down to below 100MB, making the lag situation even worse. Does anyone know how I can stop them from launching, without having to uninstall these apps?
2. I haven't installed the lagfix and I understand that the fix has to do with reformatting the apps' partition with a faster file system to reduce the lag (probably by giving it faster I/O access to the program's binaries?) I'm still waiting for Froyo, which should be out in a couple of weeks in my country. Does anyone know if Froyo would take care of this file system problem? Even with the Froyo or one-click lag fix, it still would not solve the apps launching and memory leak problem, right?
3. I notice that after I've installed more apps, the lag situation got worse. I was playing some songs on the external SD cards and it choked once in a while. I made sure I killed all the other apps and that I still got 100+MB to run just this one song player app and yet it would still choke. This tells me that the lag has nothing to do with available memory. And the player app was stock that came with the phone so there shouldn't be any fragmentation issue (apps installed later might have?) that makes it run slow. And if its the bad file system, this app, running all by itself, should have all the I/O bandwidth to itself so the access to the app's binaries should not have any lag... and neither should the access to the songs on the external SD card. So what exactly is causing the lag then? I don't see how the lagfix would solve this problem either. I actually have read that the lags would come back after a period of usage even with the lagfix. Anyone got an insight to this problem? What exactly is causing the lag? and why installing more apps seem to make it worse? and would Froyo be able to fix all these problems?
Thanks a lot.
@boarder838
I think you really need to read a lot more about just how Android works as you seem to have some strange ideas about how it works.
To start with you need to realise that having 200mb or 100mb of free Ram makes zero difference to performance only when you have no free Ram is it a problem and even then the system will sort it out for you by closing the least used program. Free Ram is just wasted Ram as it's not doing anything and will not make your device respond or work faster using a Auto Task Killer is wasting your battery and slowing down your device not speeding it up and saving battery as you seem to think. As i have pointed out above stop obsessing over your free Ram amount as unless you have none its not a problem stop using a Task Killer and you will most probably see your device responds faster as its not constantly killing things and just leaves them open doing nothing in the back ground which doesn't use Ram or Battery so just leave them be.
Yes Froyo will bring many improvements to our devices but won't fix a problem that doesn't exist re memory leaks and apps launching that you seem to think you have. I don't know but some of those apps may be system apps that need to run all the time which is why they keep relaunching. As for a lag fix well that's what we are all hoping for but if not I'm pretty sure the great people of this forum will come up with an easy to apply fix to it.
I have absolutely no problem playing Music or even streaming it over Bluetooth no lag stutters or break ups at all although my Music is on the Internal SD card. Maybe you should look at the quality that you have encoded your Music in as that may be causing problem. maybe some of the apps you have installed are also causing a problem but its impossible to know as we all install different apps and have different set ups.
I don't know how much experience you have with Android devices or flashing Roms but if you read enough and understand it you have the possibility to flash custom Rom's and various tweaks and fixes to make your device how you want it. That's part of the beauty of Android but don't rush into anything you are not sure about as you can end up with an expensive brick so read things many times and make sure you understand step by step what you are doing if you are going to attempt any of these things.
If you look at my signature you will see i am running a Custom Rom that includes a lag fix and various other tweaks it also allowed me to remove some of the programs in the official Rom that i didn't want or need. For me my device runs nice and smooth and fast of course I'm looking forward to Froyo and all the improvements that will bring but I'm quite happy with my Galaxy S the way it is now. Oh and this is my second Android device and I've never used a Task Killer never mind an Auto Task Killer and have never seen an out of Ram message either.
Marc
exactly what he said ^
Hi Marc,
Thanks for spending time to read through my long post and reply to it. I probably didn't explain my problem clearly in my post.
There were a couple of reasons I wanted to kill/stop the apps from starting:
1. Even before I installed any of those apps killer, I noticed that the available memory kept going down after a couple days of usage and it went down to below 100M. I figured some of the apps would need 10's of MB to run so I thought I should at least keep 100MB around so that it wouldn't run out of memory and start swapping when I start those apps. I don't know enough about Android but I assume its just like linux or other OS, when it runs out of physical memory, it would start swapping and slow things down. Even after I started using task killer and killed all the other tasks, the memory level would still not recover. That seems to point to a memory leak problem but using "Memory Booster" to do garbage collection seems to help. Still, it would be nice to be able to stop them from launching in the first place. <-- my first question.
2. I do not want any jobs/processes/apps that I don't need to run in the background to drain my battery. I don't think I can say for sure that those apps are all just idling and not using much CPU/battery. There are quite a few of them so if each of them use some CPU time/battery, it will add up eventually. Note that these are not system processes (or daemons as in unix's init.d). They are crappy apps from the cellular provider so I'm pretty sure they don't have to be running (they're probably just collecting my personal data or smth). I just thought there would be a way to stop them from launching without uninstalling them.
Thanks for answering my question regarding Froyo. If they would do the filesystem lagfix then I'll just wait for that update.
As for the music stuttering problem, my songs are on the external SD card but my old Nokia E85 phone has no problem playing with those songs on the same SD card. As I have pointed out in my last question, I was only running one app and with plenty of memory so it had nothing to do with available memory. I also suggested that however bad the filesystem was, the I/O bandwidth should still be enough to run this one music player app (access the program binary/libraries?) and to retrieve data from external SD card to play the music smoothly. So applying the lagfix probably won't help this problem though I still haven't tried the lagfix. Now I'm thinking that one of the task killer might be killing some system processes which were needed by the music player. I probably should uninstall all these task killers and see if it would help.
I have gotten the phone for only a couple of weeks so I haven't gotten around to try flashing different roms or rooting my phone. There's so much info scattered around on the web and I can't seem to find a source that really has the authority or complete information. I'll see if I have time later to look into all the tweaks and such but for now its just a phone to me and I just want it to run smoothly without having to spend too much effort to tune it.
Don't get me wrong. I still love the flexibility and customization opportunities provided by the Android platform and I just love to show off my "Beautiful Weather Widget", "Live Aquarium Wall Paper" and my cool 3D scrolling "Launcher Pro" to my iphone4 buddies and make them drool.
Thanks for you comment and let's hope Froyo will bring us a smooth running and stable platform.
Dogmann said:
@boarder838
I think you really need to read a lot more about just how Android works as you seem to have some strange ideas about how it works.
To start with you need to realise that having 200mb or 100mb of free Ram makes zero difference to performance only when you have no free Ram is it a problem and even then the system will sort it out for you by closing the least used program. Free Ram is just wasted Ram as it's not doing anything and will not make your device respond or work faster using a Auto Task Killer is wasting your battery and slowing down your device not speeding it up and saving battery as you seem to think. As i have pointed out above stop obsessing over your free Ram amount as unless you have none its not a problem stop using a Task Killer and you will most probably see your device responds faster as its not constantly killing things and just leaves them open doing nothing in the back ground which doesn't use Ram or Battery so just leave them be.
Yes Froyo will bring many improvements to our devices but won't fix a problem that doesn't exist re memory leaks and apps launching that you seem to think you have. I don't know but some of those apps may be system apps that need to run all the time which is why they keep relaunching. As for a lag fix well that's what we are all hoping for but if not I'm pretty sure the great people of this forum will come up with an easy to apply fix to it.
I have absolutely no problem playing Music or even streaming it over Bluetooth no lag stutters or break ups at all although my Music is on the Internal SD card. Maybe you should look at the quality that you have encoded your Music in as that may be causing problem. maybe some of the apps you have installed are also causing a problem but its impossible to know as we all install different apps and have different set ups.
I don't know how much experience you have with Android devices or flashing Roms but if you read enough and understand it you have the possibility to flash custom Rom's and various tweaks and fixes to make your device how you want it. That's part of the beauty of Android but don't rush into anything you are not sure about as you can end up with an expensive brick so read things many times and make sure you understand step by step what you are doing if you are going to attempt any of these things.
If you look at my signature you will see i am running a Custom Rom that includes a lag fix and various other tweaks it also allowed me to remove some of the programs in the official Rom that i didn't want or need. For me my device runs nice and smooth and fast of course I'm looking forward to Froyo and all the improvements that will bring but I'm quite happy with my Galaxy S the way it is now. Oh and this is my second Android device and I've never used a Task Killer never mind an Auto Task Killer and have never seen an out of Ram message either.
Marc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh I found the problem with stuttering music. It was the "beautiful weather widget"! I tried removing all the task killers and aquarium etc and it still wouldn't work. As soon as I removed the weather widget there was no problem with music playback anymore. Anyone has the same problem that pretty weather widget?? I've already set the refresh period to every 3 hours but it still wouldn't help?!
im reading that advanced task killer is good and bad, so is it bad to install or does it really work? im running CM7 Stable.
EverythingNook said:
im reading that advanced task killer is good and bad, so is it bad to install or does it really work? im running CM7 Stable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everything I've read says you don't need it with Android 2.2 and above.
I use it, nice quick and easy way to close things (like emulators that normally won't shut themselves off.)
dsf3g said:
Everything I've read says you don't need it with Android 2.2 and above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
me too but my friends have 2.3 and they use it.
I use it if videos start to stutter (ie youtube etc). It seems to help.
It's bad if you set it to Auto-Kill. The reason is because from 2.2 onward, if you kill (not Force Close) and app, it'll just restart itself. That being said, Linux is not like Windows. With Linux, the OS will fill up memory (RAM) with whatever it can, in this case applications, even if you're not using them. HOWEVER, it will only dedicate the CPU to whatever you're actually using, so whatever is in memory and isn't being used won't affect you (aside from poorly-coded apps). You can use ATK to kill an app if it's just one or two, but not everything.
If you set ATK to auto-kill everything or if you hit Kill Everything, you'll have a ton of apps restarting at the same time, slowing down your phone for a while and eating battery.
Product F(RED) said:
It's bad if you set it to Auto-Kill. The reason is because from 2.2 onward, if you kill (not Force Close) and app, it'll just restart itself. That being said, Linux is not like Windows. With Linux, the OS will fill up memory (RAM) with whatever it can, in this case applications, even if you're not using them. HOWEVER, it will only dedicate the CPU to whatever you're actually using, so whatever is in memory and isn't being used won't affect you (aside from poorly-coded apps). You can use ATK to kill an app if it's just one or two, but not everything.
If you set ATK to auto-kill everything or if you hit Kill Everything, you'll have a ton of apps restarting at the same time, slowing down your phone for a while and eating battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alright ill stay away from it thanks!
That about sums it up. The only time an app should be killed is if a bug causes it to hang or slow down severely. Otherwise, let the Android system handle things itself.
In my experience it's nice to have for when you need to kill off a specific game or resource intensive app that seems to be slowing things down.
Product F(RED) said:
It's bad if you set it to Auto-Kill. The reason is because from 2.2 onward, if you kill (not Force Close) and app, it'll just restart itself. That being said, Linux is not like Windows. With Linux, the OS will fill up memory (RAM) with whatever it can, in this case applications, even if you're not using them. HOWEVER, it will only dedicate the CPU to whatever you're actually using, so whatever is in memory and isn't being used won't affect you (aside from poorly-coded apps). You can use ATK to kill an app if it's just one or two, but not everything.
If you set ATK to auto-kill everything or if you hit Kill Everything, you'll have a ton of apps restarting at the same time, slowing down your phone for a while and eating battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so would you recommended going into the app itself and picking the apps i want to be closed? or could i also use the widget to close all of them?
I would only recommend going into the app itself, long-pressing on the app you want to kill, and then pressing kill. Closing all of them just forces a large number of apps to restart. I really only use it to kill certain apps that are more difficult to close.