How to Stop Apps From Running in Background on Android

It’s a feeling of betrayal.

You picked up your phone, checked a few things, and set it down. It was at 80%. Four hours later, you pick it up again, and it’s at 38%. What happened?

You open the battery menu and see a list of traitors. Apps you haven’t opened in days are at the top of the list, showing hours of background activity. A game you last played a week ago. A grocery store app you used once. A social media app you’re trying to quit.

This isn’t just about battery. It’s about data. Those apps are burning your mobile data plan, maybe tracking your location, building a digital profile, all while your phone is supposedly “asleep” in your pocket.

This is the “4 PM Panic.” That low-level anxiety that starts when you glance at your battery and realize you’re not going to make it through the day. It’s the feeling that you don’t really own this device. It has a mind of its own.

So, what do we do? We fight back. But we’re probably fighting all the wrong battles.

The “Swipe-to-Close” Habit: Our Favorite Placebo

What’s the first thing you do when your phone feels a bit slow?

If you’re like most people, you trigger the “recents” menu—that carousel of all your open apps—and you start swiping them away. One by one. Or maybe you just hit the “Clear all” button. Swoosh. Gone.

It feels so good. So… clean.

It’s also, for the most part, completely useless. In fact, it’s probably making your battery life worse.

Here’s what’s actually happening. Most of the apps in that list aren’t “running” at all. They are “cached”. Think of it this way: a cached app is like a chef leaving their most-used knives and ingredients out on the workbench. They’re not using them, but they’re ready to grab them at a second’s notice. This is your phone’s RAM (fast memory) holding the app in a paused state so it can launch instantly when you need it.

When you swipe that app away, you’re telling the chef to put all those tools back in a locked shed (your phone’s slow storage).

The result? The next time you open that app, the phone has to perform a “cold start.” It has to walk to the shed, find the key, unlock it, grab all the tools, and bring them back to the workbench. This process of loading the app from scratch is one of the most resource-intensive things your phone does. It uses more CPU and more battery than just leaving the app alone in the first place.

So that daily, compulsive “swipe-and-clear” habit? You’re forcing your phone to do hours of extra, unnecessary work, which in turn drains your battery.

“But sometimes it does work!” you might say. And you’re right. If an app is actively bugged or frozen, swiping it away is a “force-kill,” and that’s a valid fix.

But here’s the real kicker: for the apps that are truly draining your battery in the background (like a music service or a notification-heavy app), swiping them away often does nothing. The app’s main window is closed, but the background service that’s causing the problem? The app just restarts it a second later, using even more battery in the process.

You’re fighting a symptom with a placebo, and the phone is fighting you back.

Why Are Apps Always Running? (Hint: It’s Not Always Malicious)

If swiping isn’t the answer, we need to understand the real problem. Why is everything always “running”?

It’s not as simple as “open” or “closed.” An app can be in the background for good reasons, efficient reasons, and straight-up bad reasons.

The Good: Foreground Services This is the most obvious one. You’re listening to Spotify, you turn your screen off, and the music keeps playing. That’s a “Foreground Service”. It’s an app that you have told to stay active. By Android’s rules, it must show a persistent notification in your tray (like the music player controls). The same goes for your run-tracking app like “Zombies, Run!” or your GPS navigation. This is good background activity. It’s the app doing its job.

The Efficient: Push Notifications Years ago, apps were terrible. Your email app would wake up every 15 minutes, connect to the server, and ask, “Got anything new? Got anything new? How about now?” This “polling” was a battery massacre.

The solution is Google Cloud Messaging (GCM). Instead of 50 apps all shouting at the internet, your phone maintains one single, highly efficient connection to Google’s servers. When someone sends you a message, the server pushes that tiny notification to your phone, which then wakes up only the app that needs it. This is why restricting “Google Play Services” is such a terrible idea—you’re not just stopping Google; you’re severing your phone’s main (and most efficient) line of communication for all your apps.

The Bad: The Abusers And then we have the villains.

1. Rogue Syncs: I once saw a developer admit their grocery delivery app was registering itself to sync with a server every 4-5 hours. For what? To tell me the price of bananas has changed? This is just lazy or malicious coding, designed to collect data or push ads.
2. Location Polling: This used to be a huge one. Apps would just ask for your location, over and over, in the background. Modern Android versions have cracked down hard on this, which is why you now see the “Allow only while using the app” permission.
3. “Wake Locks”: This is the real vampire. A “wake lock” is a command an app can give your phone that says, “DO NOT GO TO SLEEP”. Your music app uses one, which is fine. But a poorly coded ad framework in a free game you closed an hour ago might hold a wake lock all afternoon, draining your battery in your pocket while the screen is off. This is the “bad behavior” Google is finally starting to flag in the Play Store.

Finding the Real Vampires: How to Be a Battery Detective

Okay, so we’re not going to swipe. We’re not going to install a “RAM Booster.” We’re going to do this the right way.

Before you “fix” anything, you have to find the actual culprit. You only need one tool, and it’s already on your phone.

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap on “Battery” or “Battery and device care” (on Samsung).
3. Tap on “Battery usage” or the graph itself. This will show you a list of apps that have used power since your last full charge.

This is your “Most Wanted” list.

Now, don’t just look at the app with the highest percentage. If you just watched YouTube for two hours, of course it’s going to be at the top. That’s foreground usage. That’s fine.

The key is to tap on an app in that list. You’re looking for a specific, crucial detail: “Background” time vs. “Foreground” time.

You’ll scroll down and see it:

• YouTube: Foreground: 2h 1m / Background: 5m (Normal)
• Spotify: Foreground: 10m / Background: 1h 30m (Normal, you were listening)
• : Foreground: 0m / Background: 3h 45m (A-ha!)

That’s your vampire. You’ve found him. An app you haven’t even opened has been running for hours. Now we can do something.

The “Right” Way to Tame a Rogue App (The Three Clicks)

Now that you have your evidence and your culprit, don’t just uninstall it (unless you want to). You can put it in a digital cage.

This is the 90% solution. It’s the simple, correct, and safe way to handle a misbehaving app.

1. Go to Settings > Apps > See all apps.
2. Find the problem app from your detective work and tap on it.
3. Tap on “App battery usage” (this might also be under “Mobile data & Wi-Fi”).

You’re now at the control panel. On modern Android (Android 12+), you’ll see three options. This is the new “holy trinity” of app control:

• Unrestricted: This is a “get out of jail free” card. You’re telling Android, “I don’t care about your smart battery rules, never put this app to sleep.” You should only use this for mission-critical apps, like a smartwatch connector or a security camera app that must send you alerts.
• Optimized: This is the default for all apps. It means “Let Android decide.” This is where all the smart systems, like Adaptive Battery and Doze, live. 99% of your apps should be left right here.
• Restricted: This… this is the cage. This is the hammer. When you choose this, you are telling Android: “Do not let this app run in the background. Ever.” This app will not be able to use battery in the background. It will not get push notifications. It will not sync. It will only work when you open it.

This “Restricted” setting is the modern, built-in “task killer.” It’s what you should use for that vampire game, that nosy grocery app, or the Facebook app if you just want to check it on your own terms.

Why Your Phone’s Settings Look Different: The “Android” Problem

I can hear some of you shouting already. “My phone doesn’t have ‘Restricted!’ It has ‘Deep Sleeping Apps!’ What’s ‘MIUI Optimization’?”

Welcome to the single most frustrating thing about Android.

“Android” is not one single thing. Every manufacturer (Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi) takes Google’s “stock” Android (what you see on a Pixel phone) and changes it. They all have their own ideas about how to “fix” battery life, and they’ve all built their own aggressive, confusing, non-standard systems on top of Google’s.

This is the “Don’t Kill My App” problem. A developer, like the team behind “Zombies, Run!,” builds their app to follow all of Google’s rules. But then a user on a Xiaomi or Huawei phone starts a run, and the phone kills the app 10 minutes later to “save battery.” The user’s run is lost, and they (rightfully) get furious, leaving a 1-star review on the app, even though it was the phone manufacturer’s fault.

To actually solve your background app problem, you have to know which “philosophy” your phone follows.

A Tale of Three Systems: Pixel vs. Samsung vs. The Labyrinth

1. The Google Pixel (The “Smart” Approach)

• Philosophy: The AI is in control.
• How it Works: The star of the show is “Adaptive Battery”. It’s on by default and it learns your habits. Over a few weeks, it watches how you use apps and automatically sorts them into “App Standby Buckets” (Active, Working, Frequent, Rare). If it sees you only open a specific app once a month, it puts it in the “Rare” bucket and heavily restricts its background access.
• The Good: For people with a predictable 9-to-5 life, it can feel like magic. It learns you only use your workout app at 6 PM, so it keeps it asleep all day, saving power. It’s the reason many Pixel users stop having battery anxiety.
• The Bad: If your schedule is chaotic (you’re a student, a shift worker, etc.), this system hates you. It will constantly guess wrong, restricting an app you suddenly need.
• Your Action: Trust the “Optimized” setting for most apps. Use “Restricted” for the true vampires you find.

2. The Samsung Galaxy (The “Manual” Approach)

• Philosophy: You are in control.
• How it Works: Samsung gives you manual, granular control. Go to Settings > Battery and device care > Battery > Background usage limits. You will find three lists:
• Sleeping apps: This is like “Optimized.” Apps here are restricted but can wake up.
• Deep sleeping apps: This is the real magic. This is more aggressive than Google’s “Restricted” setting. When you put an app in here, it is essentially disabled. It cannot run in the background. It will not get notifications. It will not get updates. It is “frozen” until you manually open it.
• Never sleeping apps: This is “Unrestricted.” This is where you protect your critical apps (your Galaxy Watch, your security camera) from Samsung’s other systems.
• Your Action: “Deep Sleeping Apps” is your best friend. Be ruthless. Add any game, social media app, or shopping app you don’t need instant notifications from.

3. The Labyrinth (Xiaomi, OnePlus, etc.)

• Philosophy: The manufacturer is in control, and it’s a mess.
• How it Works: These manufacturers are (in)famous for building their own task killers into the OS. The result is a user-hostile maze. To stop an app from being killed (like your run tracker), you have to perform a quest.
• Your Action (On a Xiaomi phone, for example): You may have to do all of these things just to make one app work:
  1. Go to App Battery Saver and set the app to “No restrictions.”
  2. Go to Permissions > Autostart and enable it for that app.
  3. Open the Recents screen, then tap-and-hold (or swipe down) on the app to “Lock” it in memory.
  4. You might even have to turn off “MIUI Optimization” in the hidden Developer Options.

It’s a nightmare, but it’s the only way to manually override the manufacturer’s aggressive, and often broken, defaults.

What Happens When You Restrict Too Much?

So, you’ve just put 50 apps into “Deep Sleep” or “Restricted.” Your battery life is going to be amazing, right?

Maybe. Or you might have just shot yourself in the foot.

• The Missed Message: You restricted WhatsApp or Signal. Congratulations, you’ve just broken your push notifications for that app. You will no longer get messages until you manually open the app.
• The Failed Backup: You restricted Google Photos or your text-message backup app. Guess what? No more automatic backups. You won’t know this, of course, until your phone falls in a lake and you discover your last cloud backup is from six months ago.
• The Cardinal Sin: You see “Google Play Services” at the top of your battery list. “A-ha!” you think. You restrict it. You have just broken your entire phone.

Let’s be clear: Google Play Services is not the problem. It’s the messenger. It’s the central post office for all your apps’ push notifications. It’s your watch connection, your location services, and more. If it’s using a lot of battery, it’s almost always because another app is abusing it—constantly asking it to fetch location or sync data. Your job is to find that app, not to shut down the whole post office.

Rule of thumb: Be aggressive about restricting apps that are destinations (games, social media, shopping). Be extremely careful about restricting apps that are services (messaging, backups, smartwatch connectors).

The “Developer Options” Trap

Somewhere on YouTube or a “speed up your phone” blog, you’ve seen the “secret” hacks. Enable “Developer Options.” It feels cool. It sounds “tech-savvy.”

It is almost always a terrible idea. These are debugging tools for developers, not features for users. And they can ruin your phone’s performance.

Let’s debunk the two worst offenders.

“Don’t keep activities”

This is, bar none, the single worst piece of advice in Android history.

• What it does: An “Activity” is basically a single screen in an app. This setting destroys that screen the instant you leave it.
• What that feels like: You’re writing an email. You switch to your browser to copy a link. When you switch back to your email… your draft is gone. The app has reloaded to its main inbox. You’re filling out a form. You switch apps to check a number. You come back. The form is blank.
• Why it exists: It’s a tool for developers to simulate a low-memory situation. It does not save battery. It drains your battery by forcing the phone to rebuild app screens from scratch every single time you look away.

“Background process limit”

This one sounds like exactly what we want! Let’s just set it to “No background processes”.

• What it does: This setting only limits “cached” processes. It does not stop running services, and it does not stop your push notifications.
• The Bad: First, just like swiping-to-close, this can drain your battery by forcing all your apps to do a “cold start” every time. Second, it can trigger bizarre, system-level bugs. The most famous is a “Calendar App Loop,” where the system kills the calendar process, which causes another service to wake it up, which the system then kills again… in an infinite, battery-murdering loop.
• Why it exists: Again, it’s a debugging tool for developers. Not for you.

The Last Resort You Shouldn’t Use

“So,” you might ask, “what about a good, old-fashioned task killer app?”

Back in 2010, on an Android phone with 512MB of RAM, task killers were almost essential. That was over a decade ago.

On a modern phone, a task killer app is, at best, redundant, and at worst, actively harmful.

Remember the “thrashing” loop? You install a task killer. It kills Facebook. But Facebook has a service designed to auto-restart if it’s killed. So, the task killer kills it. Facebook restarts (using CPU and battery). The task killer sees it’s back and kills it again. All day long. This “thrashing” can destroy your battery faster than just leaving the app alone.

Modern Android is the task killer. Doze, App Standby, and Adaptive Battery are Google’s intelligent, built-in solutions. You’re installing a dumb hammer on top of a smart, surgical system. Google knows these apps are a problem, which is why, starting with Android 14, they are finally restricting the APIs these apps use, effectively killing the entire category.

The Goal Isn’t Empty RAM. It’s a Phone You Don’t Have to Think About.

We’ve been conditioned by our old Windows PCs to think that “empty RAM is good”.

On Android, this is completely backward.

Empty RAM is useless RAM.

Full RAM is good. Full RAM means your phone is ready. It means it’s holding your apps cached, ready to launch instantly.

The goal of this entire process is not to have “zero background apps.” That’s impossible, and it’s not even a good goal.

The goal is to get back to a place of trust. To end the 4 PM Panic.

You don’t need to swipe, you don’t need a task killer. You don’t need to flip scary switches in Developer Options.

You just need to be a detective once in a while. Find the one or two apps that are misbehaving. Put those apps in their “Restricted” cage or their “Deep Sleeping” coffin.

Then, let the other 99% of your apps just work. Let the system do its job. And get back to a point where you can just use your phone without thinking about it.