How To Limit The Amount Of Background Apps (Root Required) - Fire TV General

A simple build.prop tweak should be added to limit the number of processes in the background. The Fire TV doesn't support this tweak unlike many other Android devices that do have it by default, setting this tweak up is easy to do and requires root with rw permissions.
ro.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=3
Set this number to however you want and all the apps that were open in the background will be closed automatically. I prefer to set this to 2 for Pandora and playing a game. I hope this helps with the issues with the processes not closing and let me know if this works for you like it did for me

it will limit system app, right?

Related

[Q] How to save memory

What is the best way to conserve memory to ensure the nook is running at full potential? Also does supercharger v6 work?
Sent from my Incredible 2 using XDA App
Yes V6 script works amazingly. What ever you do do NOT EVER use a task killer!
---------------------------------
Sent from my LG Optimus V using Tapatalk
Why shouldn't use task killer?
flynlady said:
Why shouldn't use task killer?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I develop Android apps so I'll explain why a task killer isn't needed on an Android system.
Activities Android apps use activites to preform tasks. For example, if you use a file manager to send a picture via email, the file manager calls the send activity within an email app, passes the file name to it and the email app sends the picture.. not the file manager. This will result in seeing the email app as "running" even though the user didn't actually launch that email app.
Smaller apps Using activites helps developers design smaller apps. A file manager app that contains every bit of code needed to do everything a file manager does would likely be so large that no one would want to install it. Developers know that an android phone more than likely has an email app so there is no need for the developer to include email code in his/her file manager to send a picture when he/she can call an activity in an existing email app to do the job. This results in a smaller file manager app since there is no need to include email code or any other code for an activity that can be done via an app that is already present on the phone. This also alleviates redundant code. When you install an app outside of the android market, also known as sideloading, the file manager app calls the package installer (already present in Android) to install the requested app.
Running apps vs. cached apps The "Manage Applications" list included in many android devices lists running apps as well as cached apps. Cached apps don't use any CPU or battery, they're cached so they will load faster the next time you need them. Killing cached apps results in those apps requiring more time to load the next time they are launched.
System management By default, every android application runs in its own Linux process. Android starts the process when any of the application’s code (activities) needs to be executed, and shuts down the process when it’s no longer needed and system resources are required by other applications.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when more memory is needed.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when it’s done doing what it needs to do.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when you haven’t returned to it in a long time.
* Most services (while possibly running in the background) use very little memory when not actively doing something.
* A content provider is only doing something when there is a notification for it to give. Otherwise it uses very little memory.
* Killing a process when it isn’t ready only causes it to have to reload itself and start from scratch when it’s needed again.
* Because a task is likely running in the background for a reason, killing it will only cause it to re-spawn as soon as the activity that was using it looks for it again. And it will just have to start over again.
* Killing certain processes can have undesirable side effects. Not receiving text messages, alarms not going off, and force closes just to name a few.
* The only true way to prevent something from running at all on your phone would be to uninstall the .apk.
* Most applications will exit themselves if you get out of it by hitting “back” until it closes rather than hitting the “home” button. But even with hitting home, Android will eventually kill it once it’s been in the background for a while.
If you see an app running that you didn't launch, it's most likely because an activity within that app was called by another app to perform a task. If you kill the app you didn't launch, the system has to relaunch that app in order to complete its task. This is why some people kill a task and then see it immediately running again. Constantly killing that app creates a situation where the user is battling the system resulting in wasted system resources.
Android is Linux Android is not a Windows-based OS, it is based on Linux. Many of the apps you think are running aren't actually running, they're cached, this is typical with a Linux operating system and is much more efficient than other systems. Cached apps don't use any CPU or battery, they're cached and will load faster the next time they're needed.
Let the system manage resources.
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk
I have had many apps running and my system gets slow, and when I look to the available memory is super low like 25mb. In order to get the system nice and smooth I used Advanced Task Killer to close all those apps that don't automatically close like you say. Maybe its just my NC, or maybe its a problem with the apps I used, but I do find it useful to use a task killer. I can select which apps to close so I normally close games, media, etc. The other system and necessary apps I leave running.
In my experience with the NC having a Task Killer has been better.
jgaf said:
I have had many apps running and my system gets slow, and when I look to the available memory is super low like 25mb. In order to get the system nice and smooth I used Advanced Task Killer to close all those apps that don't automatically close like you say. Maybe its just my NC, or maybe its a problem with the apps I used, but I do find it useful to use a task killer. I can select which apps to close so I normally close games, media, etc. The other system and necessary apps I leave running.
In my experience with the NC having a Task Killer has been better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am sure that the previous developer, koopakid08, is correct about the way Android handles memory and apps, and I really enjoyed and appreciated his detailed post. I just have to believe what he says is accurate, as others also say the same thing. But I totally agree with you that using a task killer absolutely helps my Nook Color run better whenever the available memory gets below, say, 75mb. Without killing tasks, my Nook Color may not respond for many minutes, or may self-restart on it own. Perhaps there is something about using task killers after all.
koopakid08 said:
I develop Android apps so I'll explain why a task killer isn't needed on an Android system...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please tell me you didn't type all that out on your Nook. Bless your fingers...
Sent from my DROID BIONIC

Setting Priority of Apps for Android's Task Killer. OOM

As much as I wanted to like Amazon's Silk browser, after trying Opera it simply won me over with the text wrap feature. However, one thing that really irks me about it is that Android's task killer automatically kills it practically whenever I do something else, which means Opera has to restart every time I simply switch apps temporarily. This gets to be quite frustrating and this problem never happened with Amazon's browser. I got to doing a little research and came across two different apps, Auto Memory Manager and AutoKiller Memory Optimizer--both essentially do the same thing. In those apps there was a section for setting priorities of all the tasks and services, and it was exactly what I was looking for, however whenever I changed the settings, they would revert back to default basically right away. By the way, Amazon's browser is given an OOM priority of 4 and Opera is given the priority of 9. I would simply like to increase Opera's priority to the same as Amazon's browser, and I wouldn't mind messing around with some of the other settings as well.
I should also mention that I have my Android's task killing settings completely default, so it's not killing it from being aggressive or anything. And super user access was granted to the apps.
I'm just wondering if there are any apps that will actually work for doing this same exact thing for the Kindle Fire, or if I can manually change it somehow. Thanks for taking the time to read this and for any help in advance!
task killers did a helluva job in Cupcake.
but since froyo they only serve one purpose and that is no purpose.
Let android do its thing,
task killers are like having freddy and osama and pol pot over for a weekend. Just not a happy time.
Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire
I'm not using a task killer. Everything is default like I said. In fact I want to do the complete opposite and have Opera not be killed constantly by Android task killer, similar to how the Amazon Browser is... I want Opera to be a higher priority background application than it currently is so that I don't have to completely restart it every time I open it. Amazon's stays running in the background unless I have too many other things running, Opera is one of the first things to be killed off and I'd prefer to have it's priority set to the same as Amazon's browser.
aaron1006 said:
I'm not using a task killer. Everything is default like I said. In fact I want to do the complete opposite and have Opera not be killed constantly by Android task killer, similar to how the Amazon Browser is... I want Opera to be a higher priority background application than it currently is so that I don't have to completely restart it every time I open it. Amazon's stays running in the background unless I have too many other things running, Opera is one of the first things to be killed off and I'd prefer to have it's priority set to the same as Amazon's browser.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My apologies. Reading comp #fail
Try this http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile...dly-app-manager-system-optimizer-for-android/
or Optimizer, or theres a few apps out there that you can tell them to "keep android away from my Opera" and Opera will run along.
I am using Auto-Killer and it looks like what it does is allow you to lower the priority of an app so that Android will keep it in memory longer. Thing is that eventually the app does get killed and resets at its original value. Am finding that Auto-Killer works wonders on the Kindle. Some of the advanced system Tweaks help with launcher responsiveness, especially with just a bit more free Ram. I have also used No-frills CPU from the Market and changed the I/O Scheduler to Noop and the Governor to Hotplug which is basically a duel core version of Interactive from what I understand. Anyhow that, a little extra Ram, and the additional Home screen, Partitions, Memory management, Network and Wi-Fi Tweak in Auto-killer and there is a huge difference in overall performance. Am also scoring about 500 more Quadrent points on average. If you put much stock in Quadrant.

[Q] How can I manage background processes?

Basically, I went into Settings>Apps>Running and realised I don't want Facebook in there ever unless I actually open the app. I opened the Facebook app Settings and disabled Notifications off. Also Messenger Location Services is off too. Each time I try and kill the process or reboot it comes back.
Things that load that I want to permanently disable unless I actually open the specific app:
Facebook
Maps
Google Play Store
I use Titanium to put a widget on my screen where I can freeze and unfreeze that app. I have done it with maps and some other programs that were aggressive in their communications. Unfreeze them, open and use, refreeze when done.
Thanks grubbster.
Any other options available to me?
Other than ignoring it, you can kill the app each time you close it. There's a developmental setting that shuts down the apps (not sure if it's in Cyanogenmod only or just stock) because it doesn't keep anything in the background. This would close ANY app that's not holding forground view however.
I'll just leave it as it is to be honest. Just thought there was a quick way of doing it similar to how the MSCONFIG utility operates in Windows.
MSCONFIG does that for startup, there are apps that block apps from starting up in android too but those apps need to be running as well which defeats the whole purpose of having plenty of RAM in the first place..
The whole point is Android manages the background apps just fine. Having 2GB of RAM but wanting 1.6GB to be free all the time (200MB used by GPU AFAIK so you are left with 1.8GB) is not the smartest way to manage apps. You want them snappy, in and out and done. Apps sitting in memory doesn't use more power because the RAM is active even as long as it's plugged into the the motherboard.

Auto start apps

how do i disable auto starting apps to save battery? Any sort of settings available on phone or through any third party app?
Use SD Maid...I believe there is a thread 4 it on XDA....use it to disable startup hooks for system as well as user apps. works on a rooted phone only. Or else try disabling apps I don't use...

How to disable/adjust the background task limit?

My background with android is long and rocky.
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I had a Samsung Galaxy S, then a S2.
I can remember a Google Nexus phone in there somewhere.
Then at some point I switched over to Windows Mobile for many years.
A couple of hears ago I came back to android with a Samsung Galaxy S8+ and I hated it.
Recently I upgraded to a OnePlus 6T McLaren and here I am.
I had been expecting to see android happily use up 7, 8 or even 9GB of ram before the background task manager would begin to kill tasks.
Except that I seldom saw android use much more than 5GB of ram.
And worse, background tasks were being killed on a regular basis.
Widgets would stop working overnight, or even in just a few hours.
Spotify would close while a playing a playlist.
A quick search on XDA reveals that many users believe that Android will just use up as much ram as your phone has.
However, that is simply not true.
And so, I began my quest to have Android use as much ram as the phone could provide.
In my case, 10GB.
- I understand that there is an inherent trade-off between keeping background apps running and battery usage. I can live with extra battery usage in exchange for keeping my widgets running or Spotify running for an entire playlist.
- I realized very quickly that in order to achieve the results that I was looking for that the phone would have to be rooted. So rooting was one of the first things that I did.
Step 1.
I started with the basic stuff that a quick google search would provide;
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Saver (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Adaptive Battery (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> widget app (don’t optimize)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Spotify (don’t optimize)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Advanced Optimization -> Deep Optimization (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Advanced Optimization -> Sleep standby optimization (off)
- Settings -> Apps -> Widget app -> Battery -> Background Restriction (app can use battery in background)
- Settings -> Apps -> Spotify -> Battery -> Background Restriction (app can use battery in background)
This helped but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
Step 2.
I supposed that my specific background tasks that I wanted to keep running were being killed because of the many other apps that were running in the background.
I searched for and found Tomatot DeBloater scripts for the Oneplus 6.
Excellent! Just what I was looking for.
I chose the Tomatot-Debloater-OOS-Light-2.3.zip and installed it.
This helped some more but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
Step 3.
I realised that there were still some apps running in the background that I didn’t use or want.
So I used Titanium Backup to freeze the following apps;
- Calendar
- Calendar Storage 9
- Contacts (O+)(I replaced with google contacts)
- Dashboard
- Drive
- Face Unlock
- Gboard
- Gmail
- Google
- Google partner setup 9
- Google play music 8
- McLaren AR
- Messaging (O+)(replaced with google messaging)
- OK google enrollment 9
- Oneplus system 1
- Youtube
Perfect! These apps were no longer competing for phone resources with the apps that I wanted to run.
This helped some more but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
This did make the phone feel faster and smoother.
The phone is much more responsive and fluid to my input.
This made me realize that the apps were being closed not due to a lack of phone resources, but a background task manager being aggressive.
Presumably for battery saving purposes.
I changed my focus to adjusting that background task manager.
Step 4.
Enable the recent screen ‘LOCK’ on the widget app and Spotify.
This didn’t do anything for me.
Everything that I’ve read on it says that it just stops the task from being killed when you click on kill all tasks.
The lock doesn’t lock the task from being killed by the background task manager.
Step 5.
Further google searching led me to believe that the OEM kernel was limiting background tasks.
I choose ElementalX-OP-3.09 and the EX Kernel Manager.
I had to read a lot of google university material to make any sense of the settings in here.
I’m not sure that I fully understand even now.
Eventually, I ended up with the following settings;
Memory
- Adaptive Low Memory Killer (disabled)
- dirty ratio (20)
- dirty background ratio (5)
- min free kbytes (12398)
- vfs cache pressure (100)
Memory -> Low Memory Killer
- apply on boot
- Foreground app (72mb)
- Visible apps (90mb)
- Secondary server (108mb)
- Hidden apps (200mb)
- Content Providers (587mb)
- Empty apps (783mb)
This helped a lot.
This almost made the phone usable to the state that I wanted.
But the widget and Spotify would still stop running overnight and by morning the apps would have to be reopened to get them to run again.
At least the apps would run most of the day without being killed.
Still not the behaviour that I expected from a phone with 10GB of ram.
Ram usage was still not going much over 5.5Gb even if I opened up many apps at once.
Can I ever get ram usage up to the 10Gb that I have?
Step 6.
The last thing that I tried yesterday afternoon was to increase the background task limit in the build.prop.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 (changed it to 60)
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 (changed it to 10000)
Yes, I know that I am on PIE and there isn’t supposed to be any effect.
No, I don’t know yet if this had any effect.
I am hopeful.
The widget app didn’t close last night, but Spotify did.
I am getting closer!
This is the best that I could do on my own without asking for help.
So here I am posting my question and asking for help.
How do I get the apps that I want to run to not be killed by the background task manager?
OR
How do I get the phone to use the 10GB of ram?
I feel that I am missing something.
With any luck, one of you smarter persons will be able to point it out to me.
As an aside from all of these changes the phone feels very smooth and fluid.
Except for apps closing that I don’t want to, this phone is a great experience and a pleasure to use.
Apps that I want to run are staying open much longer then before I started.
It’s now just an overnight issue.
And getting the phone to use over 6Gb of ram.
I would suggest that I am 90% happy with it now.
KERNAL: ElementalX-OP6-3.10
ROM: STOCK OOS 9.0.11
PHONE MODEL: 6013 O+6T McLaren
Tomorrow I may try making this change to the build.prop file;
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true to false
Don't know if it will help or not.
Wow dude, interesting read, i will sign up for notifications from this thread hoping you get your answer because i have the exact same problem but with my work app, throwing it all out of whack and making me a target to big fines (in the $1,000's) and potentially reducing my marketability!
The attached screenies are from before i realized that the app getting killed in the background is what causes the problem (I've left it in the foreground HOURS a few times and it works perfectly!)
UPDATE:
Good news!
I seem to have solved my issue.
Time will tell for sure though.
But this morning and all day today, Spotify and the widget app have been running without closing.
AND I have seen memory usage up to 6.8GB used.
Here are the further steps that I took;
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true (changed it to false)
I didn't really notice much of a change.
But then I noticed that perhaps the limit of 60 tasks was not high enough.
I seem to have that many apps open and limiting to just 60 may be an issue.
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=60 (changed it to 120)
THIS!
This seemed to have worked for me.
All apps seem to be open and be staying open.
Today I got a message/warning from android telling me that the widget app is consuming the battery in excess but I ignored the warning and android did not close the app or stop the widget from running.
I will keep an eye on the phone for the next few days to confirm that this actually solved my issues.
My next step will be to see what effect if any this has had on my battery usage.
I am curious to see if it's all that bad...
geeksquad2 said:
UPDATE:
Good news!
I seem to have solved my issue.
Time will tell for sure though.
But this morning and all day today, Spotify and the widget app have been running without closing.
AND I have seen memory usage up to 6.8GB used.
Here are the further steps that I took;
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true (changed it to false)
I didn't really notice much of a change.
But then I noticed that perhaps the limit of 60 tasks was not high enough.
I seem to have that many apps open and limiting to just 60 may be an issue.
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=60 (changed it to 120)
THIS!
This seemed to have worked for me.
All apps seem to be open and be staying open.
Today I got a message/warning from android telling me that the widget app is consuming the battery in excess but I ignored the warning and android did not close the app or stop the widget from running.
I will keep an eye on the phone for the next few days to confirm that this actually solved my issues.
My next step will be to see what effect if any this has had on my battery usage.
I am curious to see if it's all that bad...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice find, I checked my build.prop and found this. No wonder my apps are killed
Code:
#ifdef VENDOR_EDIT
#[email protected] modify for app memory
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
#endif/*VENDOR_EDIT*/
EDIT: I see a lot of custom ROM's have "ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=60" to the build prop, I wonder if that going to make a difference
UPDATE:
I am a silly goose.
I broke a cardinal rule while troubleshooting.
I may have had a few too many wobbly pops and made two changes at a time, thus when change was affected, I was unable to determine properly which change caused the affect.
The rule is, "only make one change at a time when testing".
Yes, all of my apps stay open all the time.
I am getting the behaviour that I was looking for.
However it wasn't necessarily changing the build.prop bgservice_limit from 60 to 120 that did it.
Let me back up a bit.
Earlier I had suggested that locking an app to the recent screen didn't do anything for me, and that in my reading it only locks the app from being killed by you when you try to close it manually.
However in reading up on the oneplus framework-res.apk I found a reference to an oneplus whitelist of apps that will never be killed, and a reference to the recent screen app lock that suggests that oneplus will add a locked app to the whitelist and not kill it.
In the course of a single day, I had inadvertently edited the build.prop and locked the widget app to the recent screen thus breaking the one change at a time rule.
So the next morning and the following days when all apps were staying open I attributed it to changing the build.prop not realizing that it could also have been the app lock.
Last night I realized my mistake.
I unlocked the widget app from the recent screen and went to bed.
When I woke up this morning the widget app was not running for the first time in days.
Also the notifications that I was receiving about the widget app consuming excessive battery have stopped.
It would appear that I was wrong in my earlier observations regarding the app lock mechanism.
It appears to be very useful for keeping apps running all the time.
Did changing the build.prop have any affect on keeping apps open?
Maybe?
I have noticed that my battery life has gone for a complete ****.
I can barely get 24 hours out of the phone.
Worse is that it doesn't matter if the screen is on or not, battery usage remains the same.
i.e. with the screen off and the phone put down, battery life appears to be used at the same rate as when the phone is in use.
I had expected the battery life to be not as good, but I didn't expect it to go to for a **** that badly.
There must be a balance between aggressive app management and acceptable battery life.
The phone didn't display this behaviour until I changed ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true to false.
I think that today I will change ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable= back to true and observe the battery tomorrow.
kantjer said:
Nice find, I checked my build.prop and found this. No wonder my apps are killed
Code:
#ifdef VENDOR_EDIT
#[email protected] modify for app memory
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
#endif/*VENDOR_EDIT*/
EDIT: I see a lot of custom ROM's have "ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=60" to the build prop, I wonder if that going to make a difference
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit= and ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit= are essentially the same thing, except for android versions.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit= is for Android 7: Nougat and below.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit= is for Android 8: Oreo and above.
Someone more knowledgeable than me should chime in here though.
Do you think any of this could have to do with the way the phone keeps disabling push in Gmail? (Every other day I need to set my O365 exchange in Gmail back to push because it automatically changes to the default of checking every 30 mins.)
Any conclusion?
Did you guys manage to solve this issue please by editing the build prop?
Latest smurf kernel rc14b seems to have solved the RAM management issue. I haven't had any apps closing in background since using it.
thank you for the thread!
What did you find in the end?
How did you set this ?
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
So what's the verdict on the buildprop edits? Do they make a difference?
I notice that sometimes my on-going weather notification doesn't update, or gets killed off. I also have an app that controls rotation per app, and that also seems to stop doing it's thing after a while.
Just want to share. If you are rooted with Magisk, try appsystemizer module. System apps don't get killed by oneplus as aggressively. Tried it with accubattery and it works.
I am so glad I stumble across this, I just want to say, changing
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 to 120
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 to 10000
Keep apps in ram for much longer then original! For me the battery life is unaffected, might even be better.
scloss84 said:
I am so glad I stumble across this, I just want to say, changing
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 to 120
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 to 10000
Keep apps in ram for much longer then original! For me the battery life is unaffected, might even be better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also want to solve this issue.
On which OOS Version you are? (i am on 10.3.1)
Does this really work in newer OOS Versions?
I have read elsewhere that those settings dont work on newer versions, sadly, cant find the thread/source.
thx
pOpY
popy2006 said:
Also want to solve this issue.
On which OOS Version you are? (i am on 10.3.1)
Does this really work in newer OOS Versions?
I have read elsewhere that those settings dont work on newer versions, sadly, cant find the thread/source.
thx
pOpY
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm actually Oneplus 6, OOS 9.0.9.
I also read that it doesn't work on Android 10 because magisk doesn't mount /system in Android 10, but there is a magisk module workaround that you can use. And hopefully magisk will update in the near future to fix that. Just google "Android 10 can't edit build.prop" and you'll find heaps of info.
This is what I have in my build.prop file and it seems to help. I have Oreo it works great on my phone I don't know about later versions of Oreo.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=64

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