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Android 14 Apps Run Forever, why?

So I noticed that when you close an app, most apps, they never actually quit. Is this a new behavior? Or am I missing a setting to terminate, completely, an app when I actually close it without using Force Stop on everything.

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4 comments
  • What makes you think it's not really closed?

    Just because it shows the Force Stop button doesn't mean it's running, merely that at least one of its components is loaded. That can be just about anything. I have apps I know for a fact cannot run in the background that shows the force stop button.

    Mainly, it boils down to battery management and the Android architecture. Android apps are very modular, so the Java class for handling push notifications might be loaded but none of its screens or other services would be loaded and it uses negligible amounts of memory. It's way more battery efficient than reloading it from storage, and if the system needs memory it'll clear some caches.

  • Apps don't necessarily stop running unless you do Force Stop. It's always been this way.

    In addition, swiping apps away in order to stop them has always been counterproductive on Android. Not only because it doesn't necessarily stop all of the app components, but also because it wastes resources. Android will stop apps as needed when memory is needed. In all other cases it will maximize memory usage in order to minimize CPU and IO making things faster. Stopping apps is only useful in special circumstances like killing a misbehaving app, etc.

    You could limit per-app background usage since Android something, but even then it doesn't matter if you close them from the app list. Shortly after the all is no longer in the foreground, it will stop running, all of its components. It might still be possible for it to wake up now and then but for the majority of the time it wouldn't run.

  • In android 14 most apps background apps are frozen in memory. Just because you see a force stop button doesn't mean its actually doing any work or consuming batttery.

    Android does memory and battery management on its own. You also get some options to further restrict apps should you desire but that may break some apps.