How to Automatically Kill Background Apps on Android

Evan Gower November 12, 2019

We live in a world of constant phone battery issues. Smartphone devices are so widely used that their batteries simply can’t keep up. Owing to this, battery technology is constantly evolving. However, things aren’t perfect, even with phones that boast powerful batteries. One of the main culprits to look for are the apps that are running in the background.

How to Automatically Kill Background Apps on Android

Android phones have a particular problem with this. If you press the square button and close all apps, it still won’t help you get rid of those nasty battery killers running in the background.

Why Do Background Apps Spend so Much Battery?

You may wonder why we’re discussing background apps here. After all, things such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, data, and screen brightness certainly eat up the biggest chunk of your smartphone’s battery life. Well, this might be true, but this is why everyone uses these in moderation and with their battery in mind.

Background apps, however, aren’t apparent. You may not see them, but they’re very much there, nibbling at your battery, one percent at a time.

But why is this the case? Aren’t the background apps optimized to be as battery-friendly as possible? Unfortunately, no. Some aren’t well-optimized, some are suffering from bogs, while others are simply malware, adware, or worse. Therefore, the obvious solution would be to close them down.

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Put Your Finger on It

The first step in killing the unnecessarily demanding background apps is finding the ones that are giving your phone a run for its money. To see a list of apps and their usage, go to Settings, then Battery, followed by Battery Usage. Listed in descending order, you’ll see a list of apps that are doing a number on your phone’s battery.

Now, the more you use the apps, the higher on the list they’ll be, meaning that social media apps will most likely be towards the top. But you know this. You know that the apps that you use regularly are probably the ones that make up for most of your battery usage.

However, the devil here is in the detail. Don’t pay attention to the apps that you know you use on a frequent basis. Look for those that you don’t remember using. If an app is towards the top of the list and you have no idea what it is, you should kill it.

Killing an App

There are a couple of things you can do to stop said app from overly consuming your battery life. Don’t worry, if you have no idea what an app does and you don’t think you need it after Googling it, it’s probably safe to delete it.

The first way involves going to Settings, then System, and then to About phone. Go all the way down on this screen and tap Build number seven times. Essentially, this is how you enable Developer Options. Now, navigate back to System and select Developer Options. Now, go to Settings, Developer Options, Processes, or Settings, System, Developer Options, Running Services. Now, on the list of apps before you, tap the app that you want to kill and select Stop. This will stop the app from running.

Alternatively, go to Settings, Apps & Notification, and Apps. The list before you displays apps in alphabetical order. By clicking on any of these apps, you’ll get an option to Force Stop it or to Uninstall it. If you want to be safe and certain that an app won’t run in your system’s background any longer, uninstall it.

Killing Background Apps

As you can see, the process of killing background apps is pretty much straightforward. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to mess around with the Developer Options method, just keep it simple. Stop/uninstall the background apps and not only will your battery life improve, but your phone will start running much smoother.

Have you tried killing the background apps? Has this helped your phone run faster? Hit the comments section below and share your thoughts, ask any questions, or just join the discussion.