In terms of convenience, smartphones have advanced significantly. You can communicate with your loved ones online using a variety of instant messaging apps, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Additionally, with almost every phone release in recent years, there has been an increase in AI-assisted features. These include smart object removal, precise transcriptions, and even the ability to screen and handle incoming calls for you.
The our phones manage and communicate information to us continuously through notifications. Have you received a text on iMessage? On your iPhone, a notice appears instantly. Since leaving an app open all the time would have been the alternative, this is really convenient and, to be honest, taken for granted.
The ability to upload huge files to Google Drive and switch between apps without stopping or terminating the upload is also made possible via background app activity. It’s reasonable to believe that most of the apps on your phone have access to background data given the volume of notifications it receives, but how? When not in use, do all apps burn up the same amount of battery life? Viewing and controlling background apps is really simple in recent iterations of iOS and Android. Here’s how to optimize your phone to extend its battery life.
Android background app management
Android largely divides battery consumption based on three states of an app — foreground app when in use, foreground service that isn’t visible, and background parts of an app. Phones running Android 13 and newer are equipped with a power consumption tracker that monitors and alerts users if any foreground or background service has been consuming more battery than usual.
Pulling down to reach the quick controls for phones running a vanilla Android experience, such as Pixel or Motorola smartphones, will display a list of apps that are now active. Here, you can see how long each background program has been running and use a simple press to end it. By going to Settings > Battery > Battery Usage, you can also see how much battery your apps have been using. Keep in mind that the manufacturer and model of your phone will have a minor impact on the precise menu titles.
On Android, you can manually disable an app’s background usage if you discover that it has been using excessive amounts of battery power even when it is not in use.
- On your Android phone, launch the Settings app.
- Navigate to Apps > See all apps, and select the one that has been draining your phone’s battery.
- Tap on “App battery usage” and uncheck the “Allow background usage” toggle.
Note that certain services like messaging apps require background activity to function properly and send you notifications in real time.
Managing background apps on iOS
When it comes to power management and app speed, iPhones have generally improved over time, but malicious actors may still consume excessive resources in the background. Although iOS does not alert users when an app is using more battery than is necessary, it does include safeguards against this. This is in contrast to Android.
The “open app to finish upload” prompt may occasionally appear on iOS due to the substantially stricter operation of background services. To see how much battery life your iPhone or iPad has used, go to Settings > Battery and scroll down to see a list of the apps that have used up the most in the last 24 hours. Additionally, you can see how long an app has been running in the background and how well your iPhone’s battery is doing.
If you find a culprit that has been draining way more juice than it needs to, chances are that it has been consuming a lot of resources in the background.
- On your iPhone, launch the Settings app.
- Navigate to Apps and select the one that has been causing you battery issues.
- Tap the “Background App Refresh” toggle to turn it off.
Once more, this will prevent the app from updating data in the background, which is undesirable if you rely significantly on real-time updates from a service, such as location sharing or navigation.
Google Pixel Watch 5 (45mm)
Samsung Galaxy Watch 8
Cristian Penisoara is a Guides Writer and Android specialist at Droid Tools. An Android user since version 2 and a professional event photographer, he combines technical curiosity with a detail-oriented approach - every guide he publishes is tested step-by-step on a real device before it goes live.
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