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"Force app to stay open in background?"

I

IHaveAnAndriod

Well-Known Member
I am running Android KitKat and I have 1GB and I use a specific music app to stream music (Pandora). The problem is if I try to use another app like (Facebook) the (Pandora) app will close. I understand this may be due to low RAM. When I had a phone that didn't have acceptable RAM, I never had an issue like this. I even use the native talk manager to clear all the open apps and that still doesn't help. I know of a way to freeze an app so that it wouldn't open, I'm wondering if there is a way to keep an app running in the back ground (by force)
 
have you tried simply hitting 'home' instead of 'back' when exiting out of it? often that allows them to run in the background indefinitely (keep in mind this is how it works on Samsung devices, not sure what you got)

That said, you don't want to mess around with Android's built in low memory killer unless you want lag. if it's killing processes due to an Out of Memory (OOM) condition i would leave that alone. otherwise you might have panics (random reboots) by keeping apps open which use too much or might have memory leaks (yea, Facebook and Play Store are two such examples.)

As for task killers, one word of advice...DON'T.
 
I dont think it is working to force this behaviour. Its depends on the OS. Ive seen in the developer options the opposite. Force to close it.
 
Yes I always use the home button instead of the back button because I know that I cause the app to a cl actually close. When I press the home button the music continues to play but if I open and close about 2 apps the music stops. That's what I don't want to happen Lol. Do you have any tips?
 
nickdalzell said:
have you tried simply hitting 'home' instead of 'back' when exiting out of it? often that allows them to run in the background indefinitely (keep in mind this is how it works on Samsung devices, not sure what you got)

That said, you don't want to mess around with Android's built in low memory killer unless you want lag. if it's killing processes due to an Out of Memory (OOM) condition i would leave that alone. otherwise you might have panics (random reboots) by keeping apps open which use too much or might have memory leaks (yea, Facebook and Play Store are two such examples.)

As for task killers, one word of advice...DON'T.
Click to expand...

Yes I always use the home button instead of the back button because I know that I cause the app to a cl actually close. When I press the home button the music continues to play but if I open and close about 2 apps the music stops. That's what I don't want to happen Lol. Do you have any tips?
 
If running a custom ROM (You'd be rooted for this) you can often tweak the OOM killer to 'extremely light' which allows all apps to run in the background regardless of available RAM. However unless you own a high-end device you might run into trouble with that, namely, lag, crashing, random reboots.

It would seem your device is lower end or has 1GB or less RAM, good enough for 1 or two apps but depending on their demand insufficient to play music while using another app. Only solution is a more expensive device with more RAM. Android is ending a process (music playback, which, if using Play Music is heavy on resources) to make memory available for another (your other app). Android tends to fill your RAM up to make apps launch faster and keep your notifications coming in even if you close the app. What it does vs. Windows is that it will eventually kill apps it considers 'less used' or 'idle for X period of time' to use memory that a more resource hungry app needs, and people incorrectly claim Android is running out of RAM. In your case, after all system and app processes load up, there isn't enough memory left to play your music and do much else because there is just not enough RAM to go around.
 
I'm not using Pandora, but Spotify, and on my Galaxy Tab which also has only 1GB of RAM, I have it playing and switch often between apps like Facebook, ezPDF, 9GAG and Tapatalk and it doesn't stop playing. Try using Spotify. If it works, then it's the Pandora app at fault.
 
I have a Tab 3 7 which won't keep any more than two apps backgrounded (not counting services which will remain running) due to insufficient available RAM.

My Tab 4 7 allows a lot more but it runs Kit Kat and the lighter TouchWiz that is also on the Galaxy S5.
 
Nick has the right idea I'm afraid. Getting a custom ROM would be the best bet if this NEEDS to be done. I wouldn't recommend it however because people have this perception that since software is something you can't physically hold, it isn't physically doing something.

Think of it like this. You have a bucket (ram) and you have water (software) the more water you put into the bucket the more full it becomes. Once its at the top, you can't just force more water in... Its going to spill out.. You pass the physical limitations of the hardware.

So as nick said you would experience huge lag, force closes and freezes if you attempted this (most likely) but there is a chance that the software (water) isn't going to flow at a high rate, and instead of just splashing everywhere, it slowly drips out of the bucket (smaller amounts of lag) moral of the story; don't push it too far...
 
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