How to prevent apps/services from restarting once closed?

[Argofy]

On my old phone, I had powerful battery options to prevent apps from consuming battery in the background. On stock Android, however, the options seem to be more limited, which is why I use the "KillApps" app to get rid of these battery suckers.
However, I have noticed that after several hours, some apps seem to restart. I notice this on the one hand by the fact that some apps have to be closed again when I call KillApps again, despite the fact that I did not open or used them in between. On the other hand, messaging apps that I killed several hours ago sync again in the background. But I whish to keep them closed until I open them manually.
Therefore my question: How can I prevent apps or services to run in background and restart themselves, even so I already closed and killed the applications process?

 

[The_Chief]

The only thing I can think of is to disable them in Settings - Apps. Of course, doing that means if you ever need them, you will have to enable them again.

 

[ocnbrze]

what phone do you have?

task killers as the one you use to close apps running in the background have been known to make your battery life even worse. current android os are good at monitoring and making sure that anything running in the background does not significantly drain your battery. for me on my z fold 4 i have a widget that i can select to optimize battery and delete and temp files freeing up space and saving battery life. i do that once, a day. no need for a task killer.

 

[KarmaHunter]

Most messaging apps HAVE to be running in the background to get new messages. It's like saying you want to stop the phone app so it doesn't run in the background and then get calls only when you start it.

You can force close those apps... they will come alive again.

 

[Argofy]

they will come alive again.

But why do they come alive again without starting them, when the process of the applications has been killed? Is there a seperate service running which restarts the process after a several time? How can I prevent this from happening or how can I kill that background service?

Most messaging apps HAVE to be running in the background to get new messages

I know that I will not receive new messages until launching the app again when there is no background process running, but I don't care since I am used to regularly check all my important apps.

The only thing I can think of is to disable them in Settings

This would certainly work, but it would also be a bit annoying to deactivate and reactivate the applications several times a day. I am just looking for a way to just kill the apps with all its background services.

 

[AugieTN]

Could this be burned in to the OS?

 

[nickdalzell]

Android (based on Linux) was never intended to run the way you want. You're still thinking in terms of Microsoft Windows. In Linux/UNIX, unused RAM is wasted RAM. The OS (including Android) will always try to fill all available RAM with background apps/services to make opening and multitasking between them faster and more fluid. It is only designed to 'free' RAM when you for example launch a large mobile game. Android does this all on its own just fine. The system ain't broke, don't try to fix it.

 

[The_Chief]

Battery optimization apps and "cleaner" apps generally do more harm than good. Imagine having a store and compressing all your merchandise into half the space, just to save room on the shelves. It does no good, because all that empty shelf space is sitting there... whether you use it or not. As Nick pointed out, Android has optimization built in. Our processor storage and RAM doesn't get fragmented like hard drives. Unless you have a really old phone with very limited RAM and storage, let Android do its thing and you enjoy doing your thing.

 

[ocnbrze]

Battery optimization apps and "cleaner" apps generally do more harm than good. Imagine having a store and compressing all your merchandise into half the space, just to save room on the shelves. It does no good, because all that empty shelf space is sitting there... whether you use it or not. As Nick pointed out, Android has optimization built in. Our processor storage and RAM doesn't get fragmented like hard drives. Unless you have a really old phone with very limited RAM and storage, let Android do its thing and you enjoy doing your thing.

^^^^^^1000% THIS^^^^^^^

apps will start up as needed.

what apps are running in the background that you want closed?

 

[svim]

Android memory management is a lot more sophisticated than we are when it comes to battery power. I'd suggest you purposely stop fixating on manually closing apps, all that's doing is making your phone work that much harder in the background to function properly.

Since you don't want to reveal just what phone model you have, it's a real toss up on what to suggest. Depending on how much RAM and the processors you either really need to stop trying to micromanage your phone, or if it is an older or a sub-standard model just lower your expectations and accept its limitations. Or start giving serious thought into buying a new or at least newer, better phone.
Again, not knowing just what phone is involved this is a vague generalization so just for some perspective if your phone only has 1GB of RAM that's really minimal and expect so encounter occasional memory-related issues. A phone with 4GB is minimally adequate and suitable for just general daily usage. A phone with 8G or more of RAM is becoming more prevalent now and doing things like manually quitting apps isn't actually helping your phone work more efficiently, it's only for your own peace of mind.

 

[nickdalzell]

It was debatable but the only time I felt Android needed 'help' like this was when smartphones were running Android 2.2 Froyo with only 96MB RAM and just logging into a Google account would bring them to their knees. Android in its early years was like Windows Vista: the OS was ahead of the hardware at the time.