Why have my apps started closing themselves?

[El Nombre]

Apps started closing themselves on Nexus 5

Apps have recently started closing themselves on my Nexus 5. I'm not sure if they're crashing as the phone seems to operate normally after its happened (albeit a bit slow since updating to lollipop) and seems more like they're just closing themselves than crashing. Maybe that's the same thing, I don't know. I always just associate crashes with with pointless little green bars and frozen screens like on a PC.

I was wondering if this is some bug related to the Lollipop update or if it's just a coincidence that its started happening round about the same time I updated. I'm ok with computers but a bit clueless when it comes to phone software so was wondering whether it might alternatively be a virus of some kind. No real idea whether virus' are an issue on android though. Any advice appreciated.

EDIT: For some reason I can't respond to any comments on here, only edit this post, so I have reposted in the Geneal help and How to forum (although as i only have 2 posts so far i can't post a direct link to the thread :-\)

RE-EDIT: Ok now I get what's going on, I was just getting mighty confused with the QA section. Hadn't realised that was linking directly to a forum post.

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Apps started closing themselves on Nexus 5

Welcome to Android Central! How do you know the apps are closing? Are you looking at Settings>Apps>Running? Do you have any kind of task killer or "RAM booster" app installed that automatically kills apps? If so, uninstall it--those kinds of apps end up being mostly counterproductive, because of the way Android handles RAM.

Are you getting actual error messages, or messages that "Unfortunately, [app] has closed"?

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Apps started closing themselves on Nexus 5

I am posting this exchange between the OP and myself that was done in a private message, since the OP was having issues replying to the original thread. OP's post is in italics.

"I'm not entirely sure they're closing. They sort of look like they're just minimising really but a game i was playing when it happened one time didn't reopen at the point i was at, it just loaded up to the main screen as it normally would when I open it. I'll try and remember to check the running apps list next time it happens though. I don't run any sort of optimisation things at all, all pretty standard stuff. The problem's occurred most just with chrome. I don't get any error messages when it happens which is sort of why i was thinking maybe they were just closing somehow rather than crashing. Any other ideas?

Cheers"


When you switch apps, the app you were just using gets paused and moves to the background. It may or may not close out completely--it depends on how much RAM the app was using, how much RAM the system needs for the new app you're opening, how much total RAM the device has, and how the app itself is coded. Many games take up a fair amount of RAM while active, so if you leave the game without saving and open a different app, then there's a good chance the game will close out of RAM.

 

[El Nombre]

Re: Apps started closing themselves on Nexus 5

When you switch apps, the app you were just using gets paused and moves to the background. It may or may not close out completely--it depends on how much RAM the app was using, how much RAM the system needs for the new app you're opening, how much total RAM the device has, and how the app itself is coded. Many games take up a fair amount of RAM while active, so if you leave the game without saving and open a different app, then there's a good chance the game will close out of RAM.

I'm sure the game i was playing when this happened would be pretty RAM intensive but it's also occurred whilst browsing the web and checking facebook/emails etc which I wouldn't have expected to use that much RAM (I pretty much never leave a game running in the background while looking at other things). When i checked the running apps section to see if things were genuinely closing or not, i did notice that RAM usage was high but didn't notice what was using up so much of it as at the time, I didn't know how much RAM is normally used. Having restarted the phone since though, the RAM usage has dropped way down from what it was so maybe it's something to do with this.

Maybe you've set the automatic app killing?

I certainly haven't done it intentionally if I have

 

[salmanahmad]

Re: Apps started closing themselves on Nexus 5

I've also noted that apps are exiting out of RAM more often than they did in KitKat 4.4, and after some inspection this can be somewhat attributed to Google Play Services bugs.

I would imagine that a future update will soon fix it.

For a more in depth look at this, read this: http://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?p=4092345

 

[Vipul Rawal1]

Re: Apps started closing themselves on Nexus 5

Hello yes the message is like this only.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! You're responding to a thread that's two years old, so it's hard to tell what you're referring to. Please give more details, thanks!

 

[Razrie Man]

Maybe my posting can help but i cant post link here.. Hahaha

 

[Zafre3ti]

Re: Apps started closing themselves on Nexus 5

Apps have recently started closing themselves on my Nexus 5. I'm not sure if they're crashing as the phone seems to operate normally after its happened (albeit a bit slow since updating to lollipop) and seems more like they're just closing themselves than crashing. Maybe that's the same thing, I don't know. I always just associate crashes with with pointless little green bars and frozen screens like on a PC.

I was wondering if this is some bug related to the Lollipop update or if it's just a coincidence that its started happening round about the same time I updated. I'm ok with computers but a bit clueless when it comes to phone software so was wondering whether it might alternatively be a virus of some kind. No real idea whether virus' are an issue on android though. Any advice appreciated.

EDIT: For some reason I can't respond to any comments on here, only edit this post, so I have reposted in the Geneal help and How to forum (although as i only have 2 posts so far i can't post a direct link to the thread :-\)

RE-EDIT: Ok now I get what's going on, I was just getting mighty confused with the QA section. Hadn't realised that was linking directly to a forum post.

I have this problem aswell. I restarted my phone and saw the problem. Settings > Developer Options > Limit Background Processes. Change it to Standard. Hope it works.

 

[Nanda priya]

Re: Apps started closing themselves on Le eco

How can we know which are the RAM boosters?? Please help it out.