While in many ways a smartphone like thePixel 8ais just as capable as your laptop, smartphones do radically simplify things in an effort to make something that’s easy to use quickly and with one hand. For example, unless you’re using afoldable, most smartphones can only display one or two apps at the same time.
Even if you’re on aniPhone 15 Pro, you can only use one at a time. Apps, or at least parts of their features, still run in the background, but accessing any recently opened apps is traditionally obscured and only visible in a separate app switcher or multitasking view. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t have granular control of the apps on your phone if you want them.
Modern mobile operating systems are remarkably adept at managing the memory and power demands of multiple apps at once, to the point where you don’t really need to spend time thinking about what app is running when. There are still a few reasons why you might want to limit what apps run in the background, and on a Pixel device, a few different ways to go about setting limits and shutting down apps. Here’s why you might want to manage your background apps and how to go about doing it.
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Why you should manage your background apps
It’s mostly about personal preference
You really don’t need to think about this if you want to, but one of Android’s key advantages is how much control it gives you over how you use your phone, and that includes the way it uses its resources. Apps, even if you’re not actively using them, draw on your phones data connection, memory, and even processing power to stay up to date or complete tasks in the background.
That doesn’t mean apps always work smoothly, and a poorly optimized app can still freeze or not otherwise work correctly. Quitting it, and making sure it’s not still running in the background can work as a soft reset. If you spend a lot of time in the app switcher of your Android phone, keeping apps from running in the background would help clean up that view, so you only have to scroll through apps you actually plan on using. If you’re at all worried about the data an app might access in the background (or how using that data could rack up charges on your cell bill), tamping down what runs in the background is a good way to give yourself some peace of mind.
How to quit background apps using Android’s app switcher
The simplest, but the most involved
The simplest way to manage apps running in the background on your phone is to hop into your phone’s app switcher and shut them down. You can close out individual apps (and their background processes) or close all of them at once.
To close individual apps:
To close all of your currently open apps:
If an app is still somehow running in the background after all of this, you can “Force Stop” it from the Settings app to completely shut them down. Here’s how to do it:
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How to restrict apps from using your battery in the background
Limiting battery usage curbs background apps
The simplest way to stop apps from running in the background is by limiting their ability to tap your phone’s battery when you’re not actively using them. With a few tweaks in the Settings app, you can nip these apps in the bud before you even open them.
To limit battery usage:
How to restrict apps from using data in the background
Save on your bill and control what apps are running
With battery usage limited, the other way you can make sure apps aren’t running in the background is by controlling their ability to access cellular data. Google includes theData Saverfeature on Pixels and other Android phones primarily as a way for price-conscious users who might have to restrict their data usage to save money, but it works just as well as a way to control what apps can do when you’re not using them.
Google says that Data Saver “prevents some apps from sending or receiving data in the background” while allowing you to use whatever app you currently have open on screen with some limitations. You don’t have granular control over which apps are affected by Data Saver, but you’re able to decide which apps are unaffected by it.
Here’s how to turn on Data Saver:
To give specific apps unrestricted access to data:
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Controlling background apps can make your Pixel work better
Let your phone do it all or fine tune things to your liking
For most people, managing which apps run in the background isn’t really necessary. Your Pixel and basically every other Android phone is smart enough to know which apps to keep running and which apps to quit to free up memory for more important tasks. Taking matters into your own hands is really an option when you’re trying to fix a problem with an app, save battery and data, or simplify your multitasking experience. There are potential benefits to performance if you’re truly running only one app and all other background apps are shut down, but Android phones have other ways to help, like automatically optimizing performance for games with Android’sGame Dashboard.
Controlling which apps run in the background makes your Pixel work for you. That’s the kind of flexibility that extends to other parts of the Android experience too – you can evenchange the app launcheryou see every day when you use your phone.
