What apps can be disabled?

[motog]

Loving my 16gb moto g but would like some advice on which apps I could disable to give more battery and ram.
I use it as a phone, calling and texting and on WiFi for internet and emails. No Facebook or twitter.
Don't have 3g enabled but use GPS for navigation using saved maps (nav free)
Any advice on what I could disable ?

Alan

 

[Rukbat]

Disabling apps doesn't save battery unless the apps are running. They just sit there in storage, wheher they're disabled or not. It also doesn't give you more RAM. This isn't Windows - if Android needs the RAM (and you don't have 16GB of RAM, you have 16GB of storage), it kills the app(s) least likely to be needed soon. Trying to manage RAM in an Android environment is worse than useless. You'll choose the wrong apps to kill, Android's memory manager won't.

Disabling the app doesn't give you more storage either - it's still sitting there. The ONLY thing you can do is uninstall apps you don't use. And if you uninstall an app that the phone needs (just making this up, since I didn't write the code so I don't know, but if you uninstall Facebook, and email uses a function in Facebook), something may stop working. (Just the other day someone posted a request for help here because he deleted an app he thought he had no use for. It was the launcher. Now his phone gets to the initial logo and stops. (The next step should be running the launcher, but he uninstalled it, so the phone is just patiently waiting for the launcher to run - and it'll wait until electrons stop carrying electrical charge, which will be sopme billions of years in the future.)

Uninstall apps that you installed and no longer need. Delete files (pictures, music, videos) that you no longer need. Get rid of the debug log - Low on Space? Dump logcat

But disabling apps that aren't running isn't going to do anything. It's like turning off the light switch when the bulb is burned out - the amount of light in the room won't change.

 

[motog]

Thanks for your reply, I have installed only 2 or 3 apps and everything is running very smoothly with good battery life - I just wondered if it could be bettered!
Thanks for your explanation, it has clarified how android works.

Alan

 

[srglassw]

The one reason I know for disabling an app is to stop it from getting future updates from Google Play.

 

[GuitarG20]

What Rukbat said is generally right. However, feel free to uninstall anything that you can uninstall through settings>apps if you don't want it on your phone. This should not cause any issues, but keep in mind that when you uninstall something you'll lose that service.

In addition, disabling some apps can have the use that the services won't be running in the background on your phone and they won't show up in your launcher. If there's something you don't use and never will use it, feel free to disable it. It won't make a storage difference and depending on the app it probably won't make a battery difference, but you won't have to look at the icon anymore (a benefit in my mind).

 

[Guru82]

1. Can it be Disabled natively in Manage apps? If no, don't bother
2. Do I want it? Do I need it? Will I ever use it? Is there some other app that might use it? If any are yes, you might be best to move along to the next app
3a. OK, so it says 'Uninstall'... go to #4.
3b. No, it says 'Disable' or 'Uninstall updates'... go to #5
4. Uninstalling an app by removing it's APK. If you've got root and this is a System app, you might want to backup the APK before uninstalling. *You can't uninstall a system app in native Manage apps. Anyway, I'll leave this here
5. Uninstalling updates may lead to option to Disable. It's safe to Disable, the app can easily be reinstated through Manage apps and then updated if you wish

 

[motog]

Thanks guys, this android system seems to be far more clever that me!
I think you have put me on the right track for getting my head round it - one more question if I may.
I cleared the cache(s) of all my apps and saw that the free ram went down?
I was sort of expecting it to go up!

Alan

 

[GuitarG20]

Thanks guys, this android system seems to be far more clever that me!
I think you have put me on the right track for getting my head round it - one more question if I may.
I cleared the cache(s) of all my apps and saw that the free ram went down?
I was sort of expecting it to go up!

Alan

An important thing to remember about android is that it manages it's own RAM quite effectively. There is no real need to try and keep RAM empty. Android RAM management will automatically stock the apps you use most in your RAM so that they will open faster, leading to an overall quicker experience. RAM uses the same amount of energy whether empty or full. (This is why we do not recommend task killers; sometimes they can fight with android's internal ram management and cause battery life problems when the task killer keeps killing an app then android reopens it to ram to have it ready.) Android ram management will empty out space automatically if it needs more ram for any particular app.

But, anyways, to answer your question, it's possible that the system process that clears out caches was not in your ram, then was added to clear our the caches. If your internal storage space got more open, then clearing your caches did it's job. I wouldn't worry about the ram though if you see above.

 

[electricpete]

On my phone (s4 running 4.3) the category of free ram DOES include cached processes. In other words, ram occupied by that cache is still considered free. Therefore obviously we don't expect clearing cached processes to have a significant effect on free ram because it's free whether out not it had cache

It's a terminology thing (what definition of"free" is used), but it also highlight an important distinction that is sometimes overlooked. The apps in your cached processe have lowest priority. It's not really worth looking at them. On the other hand, the apps that perpetually show in "running services" have a higher priority and reduce the room available for the cached processes (cached process will always be flushed before running service regardless of recency of use). It's probably irrelevant for a modern NEW phone, but as you keep adding apps which happen to have running services, room for cache gets reduced. Sooner or later IF you add enough stood with associated perpetually running services, performance and battery life will be affected. At that time it is certainly worthwhile to freeze or uninstall some apps that are perpetual running services.

As a matter of general housekeeping, I don't wait for my phone to get slow. I periodically review running services. If there are things in there that I don't use, I look into freezing or deleting them (for apps I didn't install, Google to see if that particular app can be removed without adverse effects).

By the way, cache is also a term that is tricky. There are multiple cashes besides the cached processes...clearing different caches has different effect.