Choosing a Launcher

[WhoDoGuru]

I have a lot of apps installed on my various Android devices.

Only a small handful of them are used many times a day.

Most of them are only used occasionally. I do not want them to automatically start on boot and begin to use resources: CPU, memory, battery, bandwidth, etc. This quickly adds up and causes problems. I want a "do not launch on boot" setting for each app. And, have it only begin to consume resources when it is manually started.

So far, I have only used the default launcher on each of my devices. In the Google Play Store alone I see slightly different choices of 10 to 20 launchers for each device.

What should I try first?

 

[chanchan05]

I don't see a connection of what you want and a launcher, It won't help you controlling what apps launch at boot. Plus what you're trying to accomplish goes against how Android is designed and will lead to further trouble down the line.

 

[WhoDoGuru]

Ok, I guess I don't understand what a launcher is and why there are so many of them.

So, how do I prevent Infrequently used apps from consuming way too many resources other than constantly uninstalling and reinstalling them? This might make sense for the most rarely used apps. But, it would be really painful for most of them.

 

[chanchan05]

Exactly what apps are these and what phone do you have? and what resources are you talking about? RAM? Because Android is designed to use up as much RAM as possible to save battery. Even Windows works that way. It's common to see over 60% RAM used on Android.

 

[Mooncatt]

Ok, I guess I don't understand what a launcher is and why there are so many of them.

So, how do I prevent Infrequently used apps from consuming way too many resources other than constantly uninstalling and reinstalling them? This might make sense for the most rarely used apps. But, it would be really painful for most of them.

An Android launcher is like the Windows desktop. It's an app that lets you navigate and access (I.e "launch") your other apps, settings, widgets, etc. Other launchers in the Play store are basically to change the visual appearance and some functionality of your home view. It has nothing to do with what happens at boot.

As Chachan05 said, what you are wanting runs counter to how Android was designed. In Android, memory takes up the same amount of power whether it's in use or not, hence the phrase "free memory is wasted memory." So Android will initialize apps in the background and leave them dormant, but are then able to be brought to the foreground quickly when requested without being started from scratch. What this means to you is more efficient task switching and better battery life. As the OS learns your usage patterns, it'll get better at knowing which apps should be kept in memory.

This is a core component of Android. Because those apps are dormant, you are unlikely to see any performance boost by killing them off. To put a finer point on it, there are memory boosters/optimizers in the Play store that will claim to do similar what you're asking. If you install one, it'll start killing apps. The OS sees this free memory and will start more apps to fill it. The optimizer app now sees more unused apps to kill. Lather, rinse, repeat. As the optimizer app fights with Android, you're now using more processing power and burning through more battery.

If you're not seeing any performance issues, it's best to leave well enough alone. If you suspect you are having problems, you can activate the developer options (settings > about phone > software info > tap the build number box 7 times, then back out to the main settings screen to find them) and use the restrict background processes option.

 

[WhoDoGuru]

Hi, a power glitch ate my response to Chanchan05. I'll respond to Mooncatt here, too. But I will send things out in chunks by subtopic.

Phone Moto g6 play

I have a couple of these phones. Model XT1922-9. There are at least 2 versions of the hardware. I'm not absolutely sure the specs I have match the hardware I have.

The specs say it's has a 4000mAh battery and lasts up to 36hrs.

It runs hot and lasts 8-10 hrs.

Other resource usage is probably ok. I haven't taken a close look at bandwidth yet.

 

[WhoDoGuru]

Phone Continued

The phone gets sluggish a few times a day. Rebooting solves the problem.

Tablet Amazon Fire HD8 (7th Generation)

I successfully installed Google Play Store following instructions found at xda-developers.com.

There was only one serious problem, my favorite mail app Google Inbox crashes and is unusable. Everything else works.

I haven't checked the specs. But, the battery lasts a long time unless the display gets stuck on. It takes a long time to charge, but that's ok.

Again, I haven't taken a close look at bandwidth usage.

It does get sluggish and have to be rebooted, too.

 

[WhoDoGuru]

Android fighting with cleaners

Mooncatt suggested this may be the problem. I'll have to look see how to disable or remove the cleaners. They are tangled up with the antivirus apps.

Restrict background processes developer option

I'll look into this.

 

[chanchan05]

Hi, a power glitch ate my response to Chanchan05. I'll respond to Mooncatt here, too. But I will send things out in chunks by subtopic.

Phone Moto g6 play

I have a couple of these phones. Model XT1922-9. There are at least 2 versions of the hardware. I'm not absolutely sure the specs I have match the hardware I have.

The specs say it's has a 4000mAh battery and lasts up to 36hrs.

It runs hot and lasts 8-10 hrs.

Other resource usage is probably ok. I haven't taken a close look at bandwidth yet.

The 36hr battery life claimed is in a lab test. Claimed battery life almost always cannot be achieved in real life situations.
The phone running hot simply means you left something running in the background. It could be a runaway app, it could be not. For example, if you played a game but did not exit it properly and left it running in the background.

Phone Continued

The phone gets sluggish a few times a day. Rebooting solves the problem.

Tablet Amazon Fire HD8 (7th Generation)

I successfully installed Google Play Store following instructions found at xda-developers.com.

There was only one serious problem, my favorite mail app Google Inbox crashes and is unusable. Everything else works.

I haven't checked the specs. But, the battery lasts a long time unless the display gets stuck on. It takes a long time to charge, but that's ok.

Again, I haven't taken a close look at bandwidth usage.

It does get sluggish and have to be rebooted, too.

I don't see anything here that says you need to do something to it. It's not a powerful tablet to begin with plus you did put software framework in it that was never meant for it when it was designed.

Android fighting with cleaners

Mooncatt suggested this may be the problem. I'll have to look see how to disable or remove the cleaners. They are tangled up with the antivirus apps.

Restrict background processes developer option

I'll look into this.

If you've been using cleaners for a while, then you've probably ruined the learning algorithms already. You need to factory reset them and don't even think of using any ram booster or performance enhancing apps.

 

[Mooncatt]

The 36hr battery life claimed is in a lab test. Claimed battery life almost always cannot be achieved in real life situations.
The phone running hot simply means you left something running in the background. It could be a runaway app, it could be not. For example, if you played a game but did not exit it properly and left it running in the background.

I would classify a game running in the background as a runaway app. I exit mine all the time with using only the home button or app switching window, and they effectively pause in the background (unless I leave them too long or do something else intensive that needs the RAM).

But yes, there are certainly poorly coded apps that can eat up resources in the background. Also, anything that uses push notifications (email apps, instant messengers, weather apps, ect.) will also use up some resources in the background to monitor server statuses and such. So you may want to look at your apps for any such app as well and see if you can lower its resource use.

 

[WhoDoGuru]

Can you suggest a good antivirus app that is not all tangled up with undesirable cleaners?

Or, do I need to figure out the voodoo for running antivirus apps without enabling their associated cleaners?

I do like the "notification cleaner" that diverts the notifications from noisy apps to a queue that I only look at periodically, or delete the queue without examining the details instead of having to respond to each notification individually,

Once I get the cleaners under control I need to take notes on what apps I have currently installed then do a factory reset. Sometimes installed apps are reinstalled after a factory reset and sometimes they are not. I have not figured out the details.

I am not very concerned with tablet issues. I mentioned the tablet because it appears to have some similar symptoms although it is built upon a much different base configuration.

I am concerned about battery issues on the phone.

"Settings -> Battery -> App usage since full charge" never shows more than a few percent for each app. Never shows apps using less than 1%. Adding up the usage reported by apps I never get more than 20-25%. Even though the phone often runs hot to the touch. Are there better tools for diagnosing battery issues.

 

[WhoDoGuru]

I wasn't expecting the advertised 36 hours. But I was expecting a bit more out of a 4000 mAh battery.

 

[chanchan05]

I wasn't expecting the advertised 36 hours. But I was expecting a bit more out of a 4000 mAh battery.

Yes, but that depends a lot on the phone setup and how you use it. As you said there is the phone running hot, meaning the CPU is processing something continuously. If you have been using cleaners and RAM boosters and things like that, this is the normal end result because the Android OS is fighting with the automated features of the supposed cleaners, ram boosters and such.

Modern OS like Windows and Android all put apps onto RAM early even when not in use to save battery/CPU cycles. The only difference is that since on Windows there are a lot of programs that use a ton of RAM (like games, AutoCAD, rendering software, etc), they limit this early RAM loading to a specific RAM value. This is the reason why you see for example on a Windows 10 PC with 4GB RAM you'd see it using 2GB but Windows 10 actually only need 1GB. On an Android, since this is less needed due to the apps using less RAM than their Windows counterpart because the NAND storage is fast enough to hold some of the temp files instead of loading everything to RAM, you can see it use up to 80% on a normal basis without any performance loss.

Since cleaners forcibly remove apps out of RAM disregarding the system, Android itself is waiting for the app that sent the purge to take the RAM because it thinks it needed it. But the cleaner doesn't. It just wants to purge the RAM. Android then sees that ton of available space, so it uses CPU power to reload the apps to RAM. Then the cleaner clears it out again and the cycle continues until you run out of battery.

 

[Mooncatt]

Android fighting with cleaners

Mooncatt suggested this may be the problem. I'll have to look see how to disable or remove the cleaners. They are tangled up with the antivirus apps.

It's debatable if antivirus apps are even needed on Android. It's a very secure system and extremely hard to get one as long as you use common sense (I.e. Avoiding sketchy sites, not opening links in random emails, etc). I personally don't run one on my phones.

So I'd suggest disabling/uninstalling those antivirus apps all together, at least for testing purposes. If you really feel the need to have one, then try finding one that isn't bundled with a cleaner app.

 

[Sudip761]

In my opinion no one is better than Nova Launcher. In many views app deleation is an issue with Nova Launcher but nevertheless with reinstalling option it's one of the best.