Database Develop

Most useful task killer app?

Pretty self explanatory title.
If one were looking for the best of the task killer type apps, who's the best? This includes the paid apps (because a buck or two really isn't "paid" in my opinion).
BTW, I hate the search feature of the market. Google (the king of searching) makes a kick ass OS and then completely fails to remember to put their search engine into the market. WTF?

i have used advanced task manager for a few months and it works great for me. though i haven't tried any of the other ones such as task killer, so you might want to wait until you see what someone who has used more has to say.

IMO TasKiller works great. Unless you need to ignore more than 2 apps not to close the free version does everything for you. I personally prefer TasKiller over Advanced Task Manager since it seems lighter to me. My vote is for the free version of TasKiller

I love the task killer in dxTop - plus you get a great launcher.

I've tried TasKiller, Advanced Task Killer and TaskPanel. I'm not impressed by any of them, primarily in that none of them come up with the same list of apps running in the background. I've run one after another (without actually killing any tasks) and have not seen the same list in each one.

Shouldn't this be in the application forum?

Why? It's a question that needs an answer hence Q&A.

dkb218 said:
Why? It's a question that needs an answer hence Q&A.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats what I figured.

Gilliland12 said:
BTW, I hate the search feature of the market. Google (the king of searching) makes a kick ass OS and then completely fails to remember to put their search engine into the market. WTF?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely agree; the market search is tedious. I found androlib.com, and so I search and browse there and use barcode scanner to pick up the QR Code on the phone. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds to see the new stuff as it's being posted.

I'm using ATK and have noticed a big difference in my battery life span. However I am having a problem with apps launching by themselves. Every bootup I check ATK and see at least a dozen apps running so I close them; but even if I don't use any apps I check the list again hours later and see many apps running again by themselves. WTF is going on with my system? My battery just died in 1 hour because I didn't use ATK to close the auto launched apps. Anyone have any idea of what could be the problem here?
D

I use advance task killer seem to work well for me

Apps seem to open themselve sin the background when they have no services or function

As topic.
5.0.6 via kang
Just did a full restart so I can get the full picture, this is what is open, sorted into categories of stuff which does have services (which im happy with), those with services (which i think ive dissabled and shouldnt be there), those with no services which shouldnt be there:
services and happy:
HTC IME mod
live wallpapers
email
calendar
auto memory manager
news and weather
google mail
music
setcpu
3g watchdog
juice defender + plotter
beautiful widgets
engaget
helixlauncher
taskiller [what im looking at it with]
services and not happy:
clock
bluetooth share
cm updater (ive turned it to manual only)
bluetooth file transfer
finance (ive told it NOT to update, i dont use it really)
camera (does it need to sit open in the background?)
notes
klaxon
cachemate
appbrain market sync
mp3 store
weatherbug elite
no service and dont want:
shopsavy
police stream
Does anyone know of any program i can use to directly stop these unwanted apps to stop running every time, or any individual information on the programs?
cheers

Why do you not want them preloaded?

The main reason im being such a memory whore is because my launcher lags like crazy under 70-80mb. I have 250ish apps, and see many people with a similar setup demonstrating on youtube, and theirs is instantly responsive, as is mine >120mb free. If I leave all these apps etc free, i end up on ~40mb which makes my old nokia 6300 looks like flash gordon compared to my launcher :/

Re: Apps seem to open themselve sin the background when they
Android preloads apps into its memory for fast load times.
Just because an app is loaded does not mean it is using any resources. They're usually just sitting there idle. Android also frees up memory as needed.
That said, I've seen apps that can control what apps you never want preloaded. Search around on the market.
Looks like the slowdowns from a lack of ram still exist. I hope froyo will help with this. This problem makes the lower end android phones run slow.
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App

Apps automatically starting up, by themselves

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.

Xoom task killer by adam Lange

I no most people think that you don't need a task killer on the xoom but I have to disagree my tab lags sometimes when I have to much open and so far with this task killer I have not nearly had any lag. There is only one thing I do not like about it. I wish you could kill the task killer app after your done killing the other apps but when you try to kill it all that happens is you stay in the app. It is made just for the xoom so it is a 3.0 app and it only cost 99 cents and has no ads and the dev says he will update it.
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

Advanced Task Killer does a good job of that and it is free. You can also kill ATK when you kill all running apps.

B Dizzle said:
Advanced Task Killer does a good job of that and it is free. You can also kill ATK when you kill all running apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used it on xoom before it is better in ways but u can't close everything in it I doesn't let u close setting running services etc.. It does work well but I wanna b able to close everything plus if u do leave them open the xoom one is much smaller file

I cannot stress enough that using a task killer will cause more problems than it solves.
Using a task killer essentially thwarts all the things the OS does to conserve memory and battery and maximize responsiveness.
You're FAR FAR better off getting rid of poorly-written apps you may have installed.
A properly written app will not be using CPU when in the background unless it has a specific or periodic task, in which case it should ONLY operate until its task is completed.
There are a ton of apps out there written by people who didn't bother to read the application lifecycle documents, or any of the android developer blog entries, or the best practice documents, etc. etc.
Think of it this way: Junky apps are fast food. A task killer is lap band surgery. Sure, it gets rid of the fat, but it's horrible for your body in the long run.

ZanshinG1 said:
I cannot stress enough that using a task killer will cause more problems than it solves.
Using a task killer essentially thwarts all the things the OS does to conserve memory and battery and maximize responsiveness.
You're FAR FAR better off getting rid of poorly-written apps you may have installed.
A properly written app will not be using CPU when in the background unless it has a specific or periodic task, in which case it should ONLY operate until its task is completed.
There are a ton of apps out there written by people who didn't bother to read the application lifecycle documents, or any of the android developer blog entries, or the best practice documents, etc. etc.
Think of it this way: Junky apps are fast food. A task killer is lap band surgery. Sure, it gets rid of the fat, but it's horrible for your body in the long run.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well put some people just don't understand

I had a big post about this a while back, people still dont get it. When my Girlfriend bought her Epic the guy at sprint put ATK on it. I removed it as soon as she showed me.

my sister in-law has the LG Ally and it sucks ass and shes been having issues with it and the people at verizon tell her she just needs to use her task killer more

ZanshinG1 said:
I cannot stress enough that using a task killer will cause more problems than it solves.
Using a task killer essentially thwarts all the things the OS does to conserve memory and battery and maximize responsiveness.
You're FAR FAR better off getting rid of poorly-written apps you may have installed.
A properly written app will not be using CPU when in the background unless it has a specific or periodic task, in which case it should ONLY operate until its task is completed.
There are a ton of apps out there written by people who didn't bother to read the application lifecycle documents, or any of the android developer blog entries, or the best practice documents, etc. etc.
Think of it this way: Junky apps are fast food. A task killer is lap band surgery. Sure, it gets rid of the fat, but it's horrible for your body in the long run.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
If you need to close an app because it hangs, use the built in task killer.
Sent From My Evo

System Panel ftw! I always have it on my devices anyways just to see what's what, and it has an added bonus of an included task killer widget. Doesn't run all the time, you can tune it like any other with what to kill/exclude, and it's just an on-demand kill button on your homepage without going into settings. Best of both worlds imo.

mobius999 said:
System Panel ftw! I always have it on my devices anyways just to see what's what, and it has an added bonus of an included task killer widget. Doesn't run all the time, you can tune it like any other with what to kill/exclude, and it's just an on-demand kill button on your homepage without going into settings. Best of both worlds imo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea system panel is good I love how it shows you what's actually killing the battery unlike the idiots using atk thinkingbtheyre saving battery

How to make your LG Optimus 2x run like a Rocket! (Requires Root)

You don’t need to change your ROM to get the best from your 2x, just a rooted stock ROM and a couple of apps that will change things dramatically. One thing I’ve noticed on the 2x is its memory management is too lenient and gets consumed quickly by background tasks etc. In no time I was down to 40-30Mb free memory and then my phone would run like a dog resulting in a reboot as the only solution.
Installing task and app killers are not the way, as they’ll only give you a short respite before the apps and background tasks you killed relaunch.
However, there is a solution.
1)Root your phone using SuperOneClick (piece of cake, instruction already on this forum)
2)Install “AutoKiller Memory Optimizer” by AndRS Studio free from the market
Optional
3) Install “Watchdog Task Manager” by Zolmut LLC (There’s a free or Paid version) I paid!
4) Install “Root App Remover” by Best of Best Android app
AutoKiller is not a task killer/manager it reconfigures Androids inbuilt memory manager to kill or suppress memory usage by applications and tasks. I now always have about 140-170MB free RAM at all times regardless of what I’m doing (but I do close my apps with the back button rather than click home)
AutoKiller Memory Optimizer Settings
I’ve used the ‘Extreme’ settings to ensure I have around 150MB free, and this makes a huge difference in everything I do with the phone.
----------Optional things you may want to consider-----------
Watchdog
Yeah, I know this is a task killer but Watchdog is different from other task mangers as it monitors CPU usage rather than free RAM, 3D Gallery for example is a CPU hog on my 2X, so I configured it to be killed if it consumes more than 30% CPU whilst running in the background, you’d be surprised what saps your battery!
Root App Remover
Uninstall the tosh supplied on the ROM, I removed the following, AndroidBackup (I use Titanium Backup), CarHome, F-Secure_Mobile_Security, SNS (If you’re not using the built in Facebook and Twitter app).
I also use LauncherPro with Beautiful Widgets to give my phone an almost HTC Sense look and feel and uninstalled LG Home using Root App Remover afterwards.
Hope it makes a difference for you, it did for me, vote if you like

What do you think having 140-170MB RAM free at all times actually does?
Guess what? Nothing.

I disagree, my phone runs way better now, maybe due to the fact that in part it’s killing more background tasks and enforcing better garbage collection. I want a phone that when I go to it, it responds immediately, I don’t want my phone to chug along whilst a new app is launched and android then decides to kill lower priority background tasks resulting in a choppy experience. These are my findings, and I wanted to share them. As a result using this particular application I now have a phone I can enjoy, rather than being frustrated by pausing, choppiness etc.
I would welcome your reasoning to why my post is useless, or explain why my phone is now running so well? Are you saying I’m suffering a placebo effect? Remember, this app is not a task killer, it reconfigures Androids internal memory management, see here:
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
and
http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/158846-autokiller-vs-setcpu.html#post1452069
Finally, I’m very happy with the results.
Spadb (HTC G1, HTC HD2[CM7], LG Optimus x2

We want to see some bench marks.

Thanks for sharing! My phone does become much more responsive
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App

I tried the app too and i can say that it works, I also did some of the advanced tweaks.
phone seems more responsive now.

Yes, me too. It's more responsive now. Also when I open app manager, the app list is a lot faster.I know it's more related to file read/write but still it's nice to finally able to browse with less waiting time.
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App

thx
good one and simple, thx

cann someone please post some benchmarks?

Here are some screenshots, tested with AnTuTu Benchmark
The first one is v10c stock, some apps like f-secure, carapp etc frozen, second one is with using autokiller memory with preset extreme, third one is to compare, this was while using cm7.1 rc
now we'll see if autokiller works stable ^^
edit: realized that with cm7 something seemed to be wrong with the sd-card, so don't forget to compare the single-scores

spadb said:
I disagree, my phone runs way better now, maybe due to the fact that in part it’s killing more background tasks and enforcing better garbage collection. I want a phone that when I go to it, it responds immediately, I don’t want my phone to chug along whilst a new app is launched and android then decides to kill lower priority background tasks resulting in a choppy experience. These are my findings, and I wanted to share them. As a result using this particular application I now have a phone I can enjoy, rather than being frustrated by pausing, choppiness etc.
I would welcome your reasoning to why my post is useless, or explain why my phone is now running so well? Are you saying I’m suffering a placebo effect? Remember, this app is not a task killer, it reconfigures Androids internal memory management, see here:
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
and
http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/158846-autokiller-vs-setcpu.html#post1452069
Finally, I’m very happy with the results.
Spadb (HTC G1, HTC HD2[CM7], LG Optimus x2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sure Rusty knows what he is talking about. Thing is, this talk about "the more free ram the better" has been repeated so many times, and at the end of the day, it seems to be more about user preference.
The default LG ROM seems to allow tasks to run in the background until it reaches around 50MB free RAM, then it starts to close tasks one by one. For multi-taskers like me, this is fine, I love how I can switch between facebook, tweetdeck, miren browser, google+, gmail, and messaging without seeing the apps reload.
For some, they'd want to open a task, close it, and move on to another without looking back. I guess that is where the 100MB of RAM is good for.
If you guys will be looking at benchmarks, I can guarantee that you will have higher scores with RAM optimizers. As benchmarks do not test multitasking, they simply check the performance of your phone at that point in time. (Which is also why some modders pump up their CPU freq to insane values before doing their bench then posting it.)
I have nothing against AKMO, and I find it very effective for Froyo builds. But I would recommend that each user try it out themselves. It's not a "1 fix for all" thing.

spadb said:
I disagree, my phone runs way better now, maybe due to the fact that in part it’s killing more background tasks and enforcing better garbage collection. I want a phone that when I go to it, it responds immediately, I don’t want my phone to chug along whilst a new app is launched and android then decides to kill lower priority background tasks resulting in a choppy experience. These are my findings, and I wanted to share them. As a result using this particular application I now have a phone I can enjoy, rather than being frustrated by pausing, choppiness etc.
I would welcome your reasoning to why my post is useless, or explain why my phone is now running so well? Are you saying I’m suffering a placebo effect? Remember, this app is not a task killer, it reconfigures Androids internal memory management, see here:
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
and
http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/158846-autokiller-vs-setcpu.html#post1452069
Finally, I’m very happy with the results.
Spadb (HTC G1, HTC HD2[CM7], LG Optimus x2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll just say this once: Free RAM is wasted RAM. If you feel´your phone is slow try adding some swap space

kiljacken said:
I'll just say this once: Free RAM is wasted RAM. If you feel´your phone is slow try adding some swap space
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does O2X already support swap space in EXT? (Or are your referring to VM heap?)

Doesn't play well with Fr19 at all (2 reboots in 2 minutes). Maybe I touched some settings that I shouldn't though.

akyp said:
Doesn't play well with Fr19 at all (2 reboots in 2 minutes). Maybe I touched some settings that I shouldn't though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, FR19 is one of the more stable ROMs out there. Try full wipe then reflash maybe.