If an application proves to be too memory or power hungry, here’s how to find and stop it using system settings.
Which Android app uses the most battery or memory? When the mobile device becomes sluggish, how do you identify which apps are running? The arrival of Android 6 Marshmallow, as well as Android 7, has complicated operations a bit compared to Android 5 but it is still possible to engage in a little investigative work on your smartphone or tablet, to fix a problem. Here’s how to do it.
1 – Watch which apps consume the most
All the steps of this tutorial start with accessing the settings of the smartphone. On some smartphones, an icon is provided for this purpose on the home screen. If not, swipe down from the top of the screen to bring up the settings area. You will then see at the top of the screen a gear icon (make a second swipe if this is not the case). Press the icon to display the parameters.
Touch the Battery icon, then the button Details. The list of applications is then displayed with their percentages of energy consumption.
The information displayed makes it possible to detect whether an app is particularly energy intensive. If so, you can turn it off if you don’t need to (see step 3).
2 – Find the apps currently running
This is where things get complicated on Android 6, compared to Android 5. Version 6 no longer allows you to list running apps, simply by going to the Apps section of Settings. The only solution is to activate the Android options for developers.
In the Settings, touch icon About the phone which is placed at the very bottom (the display must be scrolled down). Then type seven consecutive times in the section Build number. From a certain point on, Android indicates the number of times that you still have to type in order to become a developer. Then tap on the backspace arrow at the top of the screen. An entrance Developer options has just appeared in the System section of Android Settings.
Tap on this entry, then tap Running services. Android then displays the amount of global RAM used, but also the distribution of the latter for each application. This helps determine if any of the apps are really too resource intensive. It is also possible to know the consumption of background processes. To do this, simply tap at the top of the screen on See cached process.
To return to the applications, you must then press Show services
3 – Stop or disable suspicious applications
If you’ve detected a suspicious app and don’t need it, you can stop it. In Android Settings, tap the icon Applications, then the tab All. Scroll down the page until you find the relevant app and press its icon. Then just touch the button Force stop to stop it.
Some apps installed by manufacturers (antivirus, multimedia portal) are sometimes loaded at startup and can consume resources. If you don’t need them, you can often turn them off. The operation is similar to stopping but then gives access to a deactivate button instead of Uninstall. If this button is not grayed out, just touch it so that the app is no longer loaded on startup.