Help [SOLVED] How to bring back vertical recently opened apps display?

[Advait]

When I first got my Galaxy A71, the recent apps button showed a vertical stacked overlapping list of my recent open apps. This was great. For some reason, this display was replaced by a horizontal slide list that only shows 1 open app at a time. How to go back to the vertical stacked overlapping list of open apps?

Can a custom launcher do this?

 

[ocnbrze]

i do not have your phone, but every samsung flagship phone i have owned has always had horizontal "recents"(recently opened opened apps). i have never seen it vertically before.

have you done a search for recents? on my z fold 4, the option for this feature is under display>navigation bar. the option to change it back to vertical might be there. if it is not there, then it might be that the latest update changed it.

 

[Hadron]

Can a custom launcher do this?

No, I'm afraid not.

In fact since Android 9 the recent apps switcher has been a feature of the default launcher, so it might seem logical that changing launcher would do this. But it's actually the pre-installed system launcher that controls this, whatever alternative launcher you use. So a custom ROM could change this, but otherwise you have what the manufacturer installed (and don't rush to root just in order to change this: first find out whether what you want actually exists, then make sure you understand the other implications of rooting, not least what is likely to stop working if you do it).

What I find surprising is that you ever had the vertical app switcher, since the A71 was released with Android 10 while the horizontally-scrolling 1 app per screen switcher was introduced in Android 9. I can only assume that Samsung kept an older version somewhat longer with the A71. Even so what you describe sounds even older than what I remember Android 8 having (I do somewhat remember the vertical overlapping thing, but never liked it very much - but back when that was the norm I was running custom ROMs, which meant I had more options anyway).

 

[svim]

I'm going to suggest you just give up manually manipulating your phone's recently open apps. Unless an individual app is having a problem, by trying to micromanage your phone's memory management you're not really helping it run better, you're instead forcing it to work that much harder than it needs to.

Android memory management is a lot more sophisticated than we think we are. Opened apps get retained in the RAM as an intended function, and the memory management will kill off those running background processes but only when necessary. With Android, having high numbers of RAM usage is a sign your phone is working as it should be.
A lot of people mistakenly assume Android is using the same antiquated memory management as Windows XP so they instinctively think manually killing off running processes is helping. What you're doing is creating a situation where apps you use frequently could be launching faster but cannot, because you're intentionally interfering with the basic functionality.

 

[Advait]

Problem solved. I installed the "Home Up" app and it had the vertical app list feature. Perfect. Now I can see about 7 or 8 of my open apps and easily select any one of them. Yay!