Google just hinted that it may start implementing stricter measures against “task killer” apps with the release of Android 14. These apps are designed to force-stop background processes in order to free up memory and save battery life. However, they can often do more harm than good.
Android already has built-in measures to manage tasks without negatively affecting performance. When apps are killed and restarted, the cache is cleared out, which can actually slow down the performance of the app. This is because the cache is what allowed the app to start up faster in the first place by storing images and other data so it doesn’t need to fetch it again from scratch.
Now, it seems there will be a crackdown on these apps as Google is looking to make restrictions to its “task killer” API (kudos: Esper). Instead of an app being allowed to kill the background processes of other apps, it will only be allowed to kill its own background process regardless of its API target level.
This change will certainly be welcome, as users downloading and installing these task-killing apps and constantly and perhaps ignorantly killing background processes that need to then automatically restart don’t realize this sucks battery life much more than simply not using them to begin with.
Google has made it clear that it’s not possible for a third-party application to improve the memory, power, or thermal behavior of an Android device. In fact, the company has included this very warning in its developer documentation against misleading claims about app performance improvements. This indicates it’s likely to start warning against task-killing apps in the near future.
In my opinion, it’s vital for anyone using a piece of technology to spend time researching it and learning about it and how it operates instead of just using it blindly. By installing and using apps that toy with core system processes, one could end up causing more damage than the benefits they’re hoping for. However, it’s understandable that task-killing apps have been a part of Android phone culture for over a decade, so a false perception of their benefits has become engrained in all of us until we’re told otherwise.
Newsletter Signup
