Check and Close Background Apps on Android – 2 Simple Ways

A few days back, I have noticed that my mobile phone battery is draining up so fast even though I’m not using my mobile much. Also, I felt like there is a bit of lag as well.

After some research, I found that there are certain apps running on the background causing all these performance issues. I have installed those applications for temporary usage and closed after that. But they are still running behind the notice and eating up all the phone resources.

If you are also facing the same problems, then this detailed guide is for you. We have mentioned 2 simple and straight-forward ways to check and close background apps on Android mobiles.

Android is a complex operating system with a lot of background processes running to function properly. There will be many system apps preinstalled on your mobile phone which we can’t control the usage. But all the apps we have installed from the google play store or through APK installation directly, we can check and close if these apps are taking too much battery life or memory.

Android – Check and Close Background Apps:

Let’s say, You’ve opened an app and after using it for a while you just switched to another task. Do you think it will be closed automatically? Certainly not. That particular app will still be in an active state and running in the background.

If that app is a heavy load app, it will consume a lot of hardware resources and causes your mobile to heat and lag.

Here is one simple trick to check for the background running apps and close them –

Method 1: Close Background Apps in Android:

• Step 1: There will be three icons at the bottom of every smartphone. One is for the home button, another one is for the back button and the last one is for the recent applications menu (apps running currently in the background).
• Step 2: Find the app that you want to close and just swipe up to kill that particular process.

If you want to close all the running app tasks, then click on the Clear button. This helps you to close all these background running apps. Few of them may still run on background. So to close the app when you are not using, consider using the second method.

Method 2: Close Apps running on the Background:

There are a few default settings available on Android for this task. Just follow the below steps and you should be able to find out which app causing battery drain and RAM / CPU usage.

• Step 1: Open your Android mobile and go to Settings.
• Step 2: Scroll down a bit and you will find Device Care option. Refer to this image below.

• Step 3: Now, under device care options, Tap on the Battery. (You can use Optimise option to close the background running apps, delete unnecessary files and run a few other performance checks)

• Step 4: Click on the Battery Usage option now.

• Step 5: You should be able to find which app is taking much battery resources and how much time it active along with the background task time.

• Step 6: Choose the app you want to close and click on Put app to sleep option at the end. This helps you to keep this app in sleep mode when we are not using it.

Note: One of the major issues it causes when you close the background usage of the apps is, you may not receive notifications and updates. So consider not using this option for critical apps like WhatsApp, messages, etc.

If you use Put app to sleep option for apps like WhatsApp, you will get WhatsApp message only when you open the app.

Conclusion:

Tip: The latest release Android version, Android Pie, comes up with great battery management features. So if you have the old version, simply update to Android Pie to optimise your phone battery usage. This version of Android uses machine learning algorithms to detect which apps you are using frequently and based on the usage, it will categorise the apps to five different adaptive battery buckets – Active, Working, Frequent, Rare and Never.

Battery resources will be allotted to each of these categories separately and there will be a limit on how much battery each bucket can use. Mostly frequently used apps like WhatsApp will be allocated with more battery and rarely used app with lower resources.

I hope we are able to address one of the common problem every smartphone user is facing, battery drain due to background apps. We have listed down two simple methods with a precise step by step guide to check and close background apps running on your mobile. If you have any other queries, let us know through the comments.