I just installed a ROM (Senseless ROM 1.1) and I'm liking it a lot. But I noticed something odd when pressing and holding the "home" key to bring up the "recent apps" list. Every few minutes the oldest items drop off the end of the list.
So initially maybe I have 4 apps in the list, then after a while of switching between apps 1 and 2, suddenly there are only 3 apps in the list, then 2. And eventually it even drops down to 0 so the app I'm currently running isn't even in the list. Does the stock phone do this too and I only just now noticed it or is this feature only an issue with my particular ROM? What aspect of android controls the app switcher (if that's what it's called).
I'm using launcher-pro if it matters, and I haven't installed any task switchers from the market. I might consider getting one of the market task switchers as a decent workaround, but I'm not necessarily keen on the interface they all seem to use (tap home -> task switcher; tap home twice -> home screen of your launcher that you would otherwise get to with a single tap).
I haven't yet found any settings for controlling the app switcher. Are there any, and where do they live?
I almost can't imagine that this is an intentional design feature of the "recent app" history, but after an LED "notification" light that turns off after 5 minutes, anything is possible.
For what it's worth I started using the market app "PreHome" as a task switcher and am finding it a good replacement for the default. Now I just hit [home] once to bring up the PreHome app which maintains a good history, and never use the hold [home] to get the default android task history.
Oddly enough I haven't been able to reproduce the original problem I had reported, even when I do use the default switcher for a while.
I knew this would happen.. as soon as I reported that it wasn't reproducing anymore I started hitting the problem again. At least the part where semi-old items start dropping off the history list. I still haven't yet reproduce a history list containing 0 items.
Browsing the web seems to be the most reliable way to make older apps fall off the end of the list. Specifically I was browsing m.zedge.net listening to ringtones.
Anyway the only new news is that when an item drops out of the traditional app history list, it also dropped out of the PreHome app's list.
I just discovered that you can get rid of apps from the recent apps menu (the square button next to the home button) by swiping them to the side. I don't know why this makes me so retardedly happy, but I am sure that SOMEONE else out there will also appreciate this tidbit of information.
Anyone else have any nuggets of joy to share?
I liked that trick also when I first found out. Another thing too is that you can hold down the app in recent menu and a quicksetting will come up to let you remove it from list or look at app info.
Remember though, this only removes it from recent apps list. It doesn't close down the app itself.
Does it really matter though performance wise? I Always thought Android puts background apps into an "idle" state where they dont take up any resources until used? Although it is cool for people with OCD like me
demandarin said:
I liked that trick also when I first found out. Another thing too is that you can hold down the app in recent menu and a quicksetting will come up to let you remove it from list or look at app info.
Remember though, this only removes it from recent apps list. It doesn't close down the app itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it does close the app. It just doesn't close background processes of the app.
Swiping an app from recent apps menu removes the app from cached memory, but keeps the background sync's (if it has any) still running. So you can kill off Facebook, but it's background sync (that would be started during system boot up anyway) remains.
You can test it, if you swipe browser from recent app's memory, it has to reload the page it was on. Same with Facebook app. But Facebook app's background process keeps running until you 'force stop' it.
Android application architecture runs in two layers, foreground and background processes. UI and the things you can use are written to memory when focus is lost from those apps, clearing them from recent apps also clears the memory those apps take at the time.
Is it useful? Yeah, for some things. But it won't improve your performance in any real noticeable way. Best you can do is swipe away apps that you don't need, keeping only apps that you want to keep in memory should you re-open them again. But that's usually too much micro-management to be worth it.
kristovaher said:
Yes it does close the app. It just doesn't close background processes of the app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perhaps, BUT, not every app in the recent apps list is actually running. That's why many times (most of the time?) the screenshot isn't what you actually see when you select an app from the list--you're really restarting it.
I think it's safest and easiest to just assume that you're really only removing apps from the recent apps list, not actually managing what's running in any way.
DroidHam said:
Does it really matter though performance wise? I Always thought Android puts background apps into an "idle" state where they dont take up any resources until used? Although it is cool for people with OCD like me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah it doesn't make any difference performance wise, but it makes the menu much more useable for me =D
Thanks for this message, this is my first android device and I've been trying to figure out how to "close" applications. Did a search in here (I think), prime manual search and googled it. I am slightly OCD and like to "close" thinks that I'm not using. Harkens back to my early Windows days when you closed apps to conserve memory.
In the manual it says to close application by clicking on an X in the recent apps menu. Though unless it is super tiny, there isn't one.
redandblack1287 said:
I just discovered that you can get rid of apps from the recent apps menu (the square button next to the home button) by swiping them to the side. I don't know why this makes me so retardedly happy, but I am sure that SOMEONE else out there will also appreciate this tidbit of information.
Anyone else have any nuggets of joy to share?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you have the dock, 2 finger gestures on the touchpad act as screen swipes. i.e. swipe two fingers across the tab, the tab changes screens. Also, if you want to actually kill the apps, add teh asus task manager widget to a screen. works great!
elybug said:
In the manual it says to close application by clicking on an X in the recent apps menu. Though unless it is super tiny, there isn't one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was an ASUS Honeycomb customization. It went away in ICS...
redandblack1287 said:
I just discovered that you can get rid of apps from the recent apps menu (the square button next to the home button) by swiping them to the side. I don't know why this makes me so retardedly happy, but I am sure that SOMEONE else out there will also appreciate this tidbit of information.
Anyone else have any nuggets of joy to share?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you have the dock, 2 finger gestures on the touchpad act as screen swipes. i.e. swipe two fingers across the tab, the tab changes screens. Also, if you want to actually kill the apps, add the asus task manager widget to a screen. works great!
kristovaher said:
Yes it does close the app. It just doesn't close background processes of the app.
Swiping an app from recent apps menu removes the app from cached memory, but keeps the background sync's (if it has any) still running. So you can kill off Facebook, but it's background sync (that would be started during system boot up anyway) remains.
You can test it, if you swipe browser from recent app's memory, it has to reload the page it was on. Same with Facebook app. But Facebook app's background process keeps running until you 'force stop' it.
Android application architecture runs in two layers, foreground and background processes. UI and the things you can use are written to memory when focus is lost from those apps, clearing them from recent apps also clears the memory those apps take at the time.
Is it useful? Yeah, for some things. But it won't improve your performance in any real noticeable way. Best you can do is swipe away apps that you don't need, keeping only apps that you want to keep in memory should you re-open them again. But that's usually too much micro-management to be worth it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's what I meant. I should of been more clear then. just swiping it doesn't close down app "Completely", meaning no background process either. you have to use a task manager or Force stop in order to "Truly" close n stop an app from running.
elybug said:
In the manual it says to close application by clicking on an X in the recent apps menu. Though unless it is super tiny, there isn't one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There isn't any in ICS, only in HC.
i didn't know that either until last week! ice cream is awesome :]
Conduitz said:
if you have the dock, 2 finger gestures on the touchpad act as screen swipes. i.e. swipe two fingers across the tab, the tab changes screens. Also, if you want to actually kill the apps, add teh asus task manager widget to a screen. works great!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You know.....that Asus task manager widget does not work on mine. It doesn't matter if I press x next to one app or select kill all - nothing happpens. I think mine is broken
I removed it from one of my home screens, no need to have it if it doesn't work
demandarin said:
that's what I meant. I should of been more clear then. just swiping it doesn't close down app "Completely", meaning no background process either. you have to use a task manager or Force stop in order to "Truly" close n stop an app from running.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a bit different though, because those background processes will (likely) already be running even if you don't start the app. Most of those background processes are started by boot activity in Android and others are started by scheduling activities (such as alarms or certain notifications and sync). These will be usually restarted once app is started again too (after Force Close) and if they are not already running (and they usually are).
Force Close is unnecessary unless you know that a certain app is bad for the system and was run accidentally, etc.
This is by far THE most annoying thing I have ever seen forced upon smartphone users, and is actually about to result in me returning an otherwise great phone. Judging from other comments, I am obviously not the only one having this issue, but I have yet to find any good resolution, aside from taking hostages at Google.....
Without fail, when I am scrolling through webpages, e-mails, within apps, whatever, that damned Google half-circle pops up when I stupidly scroll from the bottom of my screen. What an idiot I am. The LG "quickmemo" icon is on the right side of the half-circle, Google search on the left. Being right handed, I am continuously scrolling across the quickmemo icon, which results in me having to hit the back button twice, once to get rid of the red line it drew across my screen, then again to get out of the quickmemo app. I have disabled Google Now in "Settings" to no avail.
I have tried 2 apps from Google Play, "Swipe Launch Disabler" which will not work evidently because my phone has a physical HOME button (no idea why this is the case other than the developer telling me so), and "SwipeUp Utility" which so far will not work either to "do nothing" as the options offer.
My LG L39C did not have this God-awful POS feature and is likely going back into service. Google of course could not care less about what users want or their ability to determine for themselves what to disable or not. I have never even considered switching to iPhones until now, but if this is going to be forced upon Android users from here forward it's a no-brainer for me.
Can anyone tell me how to AT LEAST DISABLE QUICKMEMO COMPLETELY? I shouldn't have to root this [email protected] thing to make it usable and have no intention of doing so.
Any help will get you included in my will.......
[Q] How to hide/disable the "Clear all recent apps" button from Recent apps section?
Hello,
I'm sorry if this got answered somewhere, but I could not find a solution anywhere and I searched for a couple of days. All I could find was ways to hide What's New and the Small Apps row from Recent Apps, but not the "clear all" button.
So... is it possible to hide this thing w/o rooting at all? It's kind of hard to believe there used to be a package for it (taskkiller), but now there isn't. Why would they do that?
I hope someone has the answer, I really do. Some folks on reddit will be very happy to know about this too.
Anyways, thank you for your time.
No, most probably there's no way to hide that button without root, as it's a system component. You would need to edit SystemUI.apk .
Also, i've not yet encountered any Xposed module that has this feature (why do you want it?).
What app are you talking about? any link to "taskkiller"?
It used to be possible to disable this button by hiding the com.sonymobile.taskkiler package, but now it isn't.
Pretty sad, it seems there is no way to remove it without rooting and going deep in 6.0.1.
Hello fellow Android users.
I've always been obsessed with customizing the functionality of my devices to make it really practical to use.
I've been playing with the settings of the Xiaomi Redmi 9 for a week now and everything is set to perfection except one thing which is not available in the default settings but would be incredibly convenient, not only for me but for many people too.
I set all the apps I use in one single home screen (not multiple pages). The ones that don't fit there are all in one folder and that uses up only one button slot.
Since I don't have multiple pages for the apps, the swipe left and swipe right functions are available for other useful things, I'd like to set that up to be shortcuts to apps that I use a lot, like whatsapp and gmail. This would also free 2 slots in my home screen.
I suspect there's a way to do it, just don't know how and have tried several google searches like "how to assign left and right swipe functions on android home screen" or "how to customize left and right swipe on android home screen" and many other similar combinations of words. Found nothing.
Does anyone know if there's an app or a mod that allows you that level of customization? I'm a video editor and I'm not very educated in programing android apps or anything similar.
Hope someone can give me a hint. Thanks a lot in advance. Greetings from Barcelona, where many of us are locked down and unemployed :cyclops: