How to stop Android apps running in the background

It's app hunting season. But before we go on an app massacre, let me remind you that many apps run in the background for good reason: they are syncing, providing location data or otherwise doing what they were designed to do. But not always. If you want to know which apps are running excessive background processes or you want to stop apps from running in the background entirely, then we'll show you how.

With so many apps you can't live without, you need to keep them under control.

Process stats and battery usage

First of all, if you want to know which are running background processes and how power hungry they are, both in terms of processing power and impact on battery. Android has these monitoring options built in. You need to enable Developer Options by going to Settings > About Phone and tapping the Build number until you are notified that Developer Options have been enabled.

Process Stats lets you know which apps are running all teh time. Some should, others shouldn't.

Now, in Developer Options you'll see the option for Process Stats, which will tell you how much of the time your key apps are running and how much RAM they are using. You can see how much battery your apps are using by going to Settings > Battery and then tapping on the individual apps. Keeping an eye on these two areas will get you used to what looks normal and what numbers are acceptable.

Digging into your Battery settings, you can see which apps are keeping your device awake, as well as how much battery and processor power they are consuming.

Disable/force close/uninstall

If you have an app that you think is using an unreasonable amount of processor power or seems to be running in the background way more than it should, then you can either disable the app in your App Manager, force stop it in the Running tab or you can simply delete it if it is not an essential app. Some apps, like your third party keyboard, instant messengers and other constantly working apps make sense to be running all the time, but others do not.

You can force close or uninstall bad apps, and system apps can be disabled.

What you want to look out for is games you're not playing, music players you're not using and other apps that seem to be doing more than they should, especially when you haven't used them recently or you can see no reason for them to be running in the background, like the stock keyboard if you're using a third party keyboard, for example. Again, once you get used to what seems normal for your device, the easier it will be for you to identify irregularities. You can always find replacement apps in the Play Store for process hungry apps, just check the app reviews.

The Running tab lets you keep an eye on running apps, and if you don't need a system app you can Disable it.

Greenify

Greenify is an app hibernation app, letting you put apps to sleep when you're not using them. It's basically an automated version of force closing or disabling apps every time you stop using them and then turning them back on when you need them. But doing that manually is a pain. Hence Greenify being one of the best app management apps around.

Greenify makes app management a breeze.

To get the full benefits of Greenify you need root access, but you can also manage app hibernation if you are not rooted. Just install the free app and give it a try. There's a paid version if you want to show your appreciation but the free one works a treat. Non-rooted users won't be able to automatically hibernate apps, but you can simply flick a widget switch to put your apps to sleep. Not a bad fix if you don't want to root your device. If you're serious about managing apps running background processes, Greenify is the tool you need.

Greenify INSTALL

Do you monitor your app processes? What tools do you use?