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Memory used by Apps - including rarely used ones

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boardtc

Newbie
Clean Master tells me that 90% of memory is used, this is often not long after startup and me going nothing but reading the newspaper.

If I look at the list of apps listed by clean master it includes app I rarely use. As an example I have Tetris installed for a rainy day thought I have never used it. I have never even opened it but Clean Master tells it used 3.8Mb. how can this be? So on for lots of other apps?

Thanks, Tom.
 
If you don't use apps and can't (or don't want) to get rid of them, you could always go to Settings .. Apps .. All, tap the app and tap Disable.

That will stop the app being loaded into memory. If you want to use the app at a later date, just go back and tap Enable.
 
boardtc said:
Clean Master tells me that 90% of memory is used, this is often not long after startup and me going nothing but reading the newspaper.

If I look at the list of apps listed by clean master it includes app I rarely use. As an example I have Tetris installed for a rainy day thought I have never used it. I have never even opened it but Clean Master tells it used 3.8Mb. how can this be? So on for lots of other apps?

Thanks, Tom.
Click to expand...

People were panicking after Windows 7 came out. They were used to their XP having 60% memory free and then 7 tells them there's 5% memory free.

But then. Windows 7 never slowed down.

Lesson is. Why have 8gb of ram if it's sitting there unused?

It should say RAM 0% free. The OS will manage taking things in and out of RAM. Just enjoy the phone.

I have clean master for the uninstall of apps. Tells me if anything left junk files behind and cleans them. Ram I don't care about.

It's faster to access things from ram. A good OS will try to load as many things in ram as possible. Things that you use a lot and thing you may want to use. Anything to make it faster. If it needs the space it will dump things you don't use and load the thing that needs the space.
 
Android has a very sophisticated method of managing your device memory so that it is as responsive as possible while saving as much battery life as possible.

Uninstalling apps you dont need is far more effective than trying to manage the active memory yourself, I guarantee you will actually shorten battery life 99.9 percent of the time messing with it than just letting your android manage it's own memory.

Have some faith, after all this isnt Windows.
 
Right. And I just deleted that cleaner app. I'm not installing any cleaner apps or memory cleaner apps or any of that baloney. The phone also has battery saving mode. I have it off but I can use that too. No battery saving apps either.

Just pretend you're an iPhone user and you don't know what ram is.
 
A task killer for android is detrimental, a task monitor is more beneficial.

A poorly coded app, or a generally well coded and reliable app with an update bug can sometimes crash or get stuck in a loop where it starts to ramp up it's CPU usage. That excessive CPU usage can tear through your battery life when you least expect it.

Task monitors sit silently in the background watching CPU usage of apps and alert you when one suddenly ramps up it's CPU usage above normal limits.

I use Watchdog lite on my devices - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zomut.watchdoglite&hl=en

If Watchdog notices an app ramping up it's CPU usage it will alert you, and with a few finger swipes you can kill the offending app.

Watchdog does not interfere with androids memory management, odds are the misbehaving app will automatically restart as instructed by android but hopefully well behaved. If not you will be alerted.

Watchdog is not the only task monitor on the market, there are many others you can try, it's just the only one I use and have never felt the need to buy the paid version.
 
Thanks for the comments. I have a S3. I use my phone, a lot dudes. It's sluggish sometimes, hence my investigating the Ram issue. No one answered why these apps are taking RAM that are rarely if ever opened?
 
Some apps are loaded each time the system boots up. Some apps are called in the background by other apps that you see. The apps in the background you are not aware that they were ever used.

As was pointed out, the system frees up space when it is needed by removing the apps that are less used.

... Thom
 
Does the sys always free up space when it's needed, e.g. when my phone is luggish and clean master reports over 90% of memory used?

I don't use an app killer. Is there an app to stop apps loading unnecessarily at load time as opposed to killing them later? :-)
 
boardtc said:
Does the sys always free up space when it's needed, e.g. when my phone is luggish and clean master reports over 90% of memory used?

I don't use an app killer. Is there an app to stop apps loading unnecessarily at load time as opposed to killing them later? :-)
Click to expand...
There are configuration settings for the memory usage, but an unrooted user with a stock ROM doesn't have access to them (and it's easy to make things worse if you mess with them - I could, but leave mine alone). I'm currently running at 85% RAM used, and it's not a problem at all, though TBH I don't remember when I last saw > 90% used. Fractions aren't so important anyway, its how much you have in total.

As for the second question, the answer is yes if you are rooted, but I don't know of a non-root way.

Of course apps which are never used can be disabled, which will stop them being loaded.
 
Setting > apps > all, select the app you want to disable, and there should be a disable button in with the other (force stop, clear data etc). In some cases it may be greyed-out, which is fine for an essential system app but annoying when they do that for some piece of bloat.

If you are rooted then you can use Titanium Backup to "freeze" apps, which does the same.
 
As above but I use Link2SD to freeze not oft used apps but ones I don't need all the time but don't want to uninstall :)
 
@PaulS, thanks for Link2SD tip, it works well. I had to do a reroot and when granting permissions in SuperSU it said your phone appears to be running slowly! I froze up some of the apps I don't use and I'll see how it flies...
 
Not really accurate. In many cases, task killers are ESSENTIAL. If I don't kill tasks every 5 or 10 minutes, my phone will absolutely freeze. People who tell you not to use Task Killers are people who don't use tasks - or pass unproven "theory" on like it's Gospel. Google has yet to design an operating system of decent quality.
 
mdeva said:
Not really accurate. In many cases, task killers are ESSENTIAL. If I don't kill tasks every 5 or 10 minutes, my phone will absolutely freeze. People who tell you not to use Task Killers are people who don't use tasks - or pass unproven "theory" on like it's Gospel. Google has yet to design an operating system of decent quality.
Click to expand...

Hey mdeva, I'd never dispute what you're saying, I needed task killers on older phones but now I'm wondering if clearing the app Cache would have worked.
Have you tried the widget for App Cache Cleaner?
I'm not just following the herd but for the past year I don't ever kill apps unless one freezes and it's quicker to just kill everything than to find that app in app manager and kill it.
I never even think about Ram and my phone flies. It's only a 1gb phone.
If things like keyboard get laggy I just clear the app Cache.

I'm not trying to defend any theory, I just want to understand this stuff :thumbup:

Ps what are your phone specs?
 
mdeva said:
f I don't kill tasks every 5 or 10 minutes, my phone will absolutely freeze.
Click to expand...

Then I suggest that the issue is with your phone. Even my old HTC Hero didn't behave that poorly.

People who tell you not to use Task Killers are people who don't use tasks - or pass unproven "theory" on like it's Gospel.
Click to expand...

The people advising here have mostly been using Android for some time, and certainly use their phones. As for it being "unproven theory", software engineers responsible for the memory management in Android have themselves explained why task killers can be detrimental rather than useful.

Google has yet to design an operating system of decent quality.
Click to expand...

Yes, you've been claiming this for months. If I disliked the OS so much I'd have moved on long ago. Maybe you should save yourself any more frustration and do likewise?
 
The free command show the free amount of memory in megabytes. Changing the "m" to "k" or "g" gives the output in kilobytes or gigabytes respectively. Just "free" gives the output in bytes I think.

The free amount looks surprisingly small. Because it includes the amount used as cache and buffers. But it's not serious. For reasons we've beaten to death in every "My phone ate my RAM HELP!!!" thread.

I think there's a glitch that doesn't list the cache amount in Android. But you can run it on your Linux machine to see how it's suppose to look.

Mine looks something like this for my computer:
Code: 
free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          7371       5243       2128          0        223       2160
-/+ buffers/cache:       2859       4512
Swap:         4124          0       4124

For my phone:
Code: 
free -m
             total       used      free    shared    buffers   
Mem:          793          742       51         0        17      
-/+ buffers:               725       68
Swap:         499           92      407
So out of my 1Gb of RAM, I can use 793MB. I've used 742MB and only have 51MB completely free. However, my task manager reports 444MB used and 348MB free. I must assume that it doesn't count the amount used by cache and buffers. Other than Android Terminal Emulator, no apps are reported by my task manager either.

Because task killers only kill applications, the amount cleared could be potentially small. You could clear all your apps, but RAM could still remain almost full due to cache and buffers. So a phone may become responsive after killing apps, but not necessarily because you freed a few megabytes.

The top command gives a similar output. It also shows application information too. Give these commands a try.
 
Yeah in a lot of custom roms you have the option to include cache but in a different colour. I just never look at or think about Ram nowadays
 
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