Does anyone know what the best app for Android is to kill background apps from running

[Klbg]

I've been looking for information on ways to save my battery and stop all of the background apps from running as well as apps "auto-starting" on my droid mini. There seems to be a lot of people that say not to use task killers because they drain the battery. Yet I've seen people suggesting to use ATK. I downloaded DU battery cleaner and it usually saves me up to an hour. Can anyone help me with these conflicting information?

 

[Adam Zeis]

I don't think task killers are really a thing much anymore. The Android software does a great job of managing apps and killing what it needs to on its own. You should check your battery stats to see if something else may be killing it. And always do things like turn down brightness, limit use, turn off NFC & Bluetooth when not in use, etc.

 

[hallux]

To piggyback on Adam's response, task killers and battery savers can sometimes be detrimental to Android device performance. When you use a task killer, it's removing apps from memory that, when you go to reload them, will need to pull all their data from system storage which in turn costs battery life and makes the device feel slower as RAM is faster than storage. Android does a fine job of managing itself unless there is a runaway app (but then it's not Android but that app).

You can head into Settings > Memory (this is the path on a Nexus 6P, your device may differ) to see what's using RAM. Also, just because an app shows on the recent apps list does NOT mean that it's using RAM, that's just quick access to stuff you've used before. One way to see that's the case is to reboot your phone then go to recent apps right away, you can see that apps you haven't used since the reboot (hence not loaded to RAM) are on that list already.

I have never used battery or task killers on my Android devices, starting with the first generation Motorola Droid, now at 4 phones and 2 tablets.