SICK of Facebook app taking up RAM on its own. Anyway to stop it?

[Erikbal]

Am I the only one that has to check my running services several times a day and stop facebook from using sometimes up to 40mb of ram? Even if I haven't used it, it will often open itself and sometimes start up again RIGHT after I stopped it. Any way to stop this? If so could someone give me a detailed explanation how? Thanks guys!

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[BayouFlyFisher]

Am I the only one that has to check my running services several times a day and stop facebook from using sometimes up to 40mb of ram? Even if I haven't used it, it will often open itself and sometimes start up again RIGHT after I stopped it. Any way to stop this? If so could someone give me a detailed explanation how? Thanks guys!

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This is an article by Lifehacker that I found about a year ago. It was written to warn of the dangers of using a 3rd party task killer, but it has a good explanation of how Android operates. Thought you might find it interesting.

[h=3]How Android Manages Processes
[/h]In Android, processes and Applications are two different things. An app can stay "running" in the background without any processes eating up your phone's resources. Android keeps the app in its memory so it launches more quickly and returns to its prior state. When your phone runs out of memory, Android will automatically start killing tasks on its own, starting with ones that you haven't used in awhile.
The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck.
[h=3]
Why Task Killers Are (Usually) Bad News[/h]Apps like Advanced Task Killer, the most popular task killer in the Market, act on the incorrect assumption that freeing up memory on an Android device is a good thing. When launched, it presents you with a list of "running" apps and the option to kill as many as you want. You can also hit the Menu button to access a more detailed "Services" view, that lists exactly which parts of each application are "running", how much memory they take up, and how much free memory is available on your phone. This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you'll free by killing it. As we've learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the "autokill" feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it's actually possible that this will worsen your phone's performance and battery life. Whether you're manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you're actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn't—killing apps that aren't doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don't, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don't go off, you don't receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you're usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you're more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.

 

[spillner]

Have you honestly run into an issue of low RAM? Has apps that you've wanted to run continuously been shut down due to insufficient memory? When I first got the D3 I use to check the RAM all the time and shut down things that were running that I wasn't using. Then I discovered that I never actually hit a "low memory" message or have apps that I want to run all the time turned off. Killing apps never increased performance for me. GB is very good at managing memory. If you weren't able to actually see what resources were being used, would the "meager" 512mb of RAM really bother you?

As far as facebook goes, try friendcaster. It seems to run more efficiently.

 

[Erikbal]

Yeah I saw that on another post and I DON'T use a task killer. I'm just sick of facebook using unnecessary RAM on its own, you know what I mean? I understand like contacts data running and taking up ram cuz I'm sure it does that to make the contacts run faster but facebook using 30-40mb of ram? That's uncalled for I think..

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[Fr33dom]

I'm not sure what would cause the restarts. have you tried dumping the cache and reinstalling the apps? What is your Data delivery frequency set to (Settings, Battery and data manager, Data delivery, Social applications)?

What problem does this cause you (besides the irritation of seeing that it seems to have consumed RAM)?

 

[doogald]

Am I the only one that has to check my running services several times a day and stop facebook from using sometimes up to 40mb of ram? Even if I haven't used it, it will often open itself and sometimes start up again RIGHT after I stopped it. Any way to stop this? If so could someone give me a detailed explanation how? Thanks guys!

Mine is only using 16 MB at the moment.

If you kill it and want it to stop restarting, before killing it, start the Facebook app. Menu->settings.

Refresh interval: set to never.

or

Notifications: uncheck

That should keep it from restarting, I would think.

As other have said, you are probably over-worrying about it, as setting aside RAM does not necessarily mean that it is draining your battery, etc. However, if you don't want it running, stop it from checking for updates.

 

[Big Ry]

Watchdog always flags Facebook on my D2 for using over 50% of the CPU...its usually in the 70% range. I don't check the numbers for RAM, but I do use a task killer and manually kill apps that the crappy task killers fail to kill. I don't care what Joe Shmoe over at whatever forum says about Androids handling of memory. If I don't regularly kill apps, my phone bogs down so bad its almost useless. A quick kill makes all the difference in the world. I don't know about preventing Facebook from starting...mine stays dead after I kill it.

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[ndoren]

Have you honestly run into an issue of low RAM? Has apps that you've wanted to run continuously been shut down due to insufficient memory?

As far as facebook goes, try friendcaster. It seems to run more efficiently.

I am constantly out of RAM on my D3, and important tasks are constantly getting killed. Run your phone for a day, then check the number of processes running. Then, fire up your camera, then kill it and go back and check tasks. The camera app is a huge memory hog. Usually at least 10 of mine are killed off after running the camera app, and many of them are important, including skype, yahoo, and screebl, which were running in the background but killed off when I started the camera app. Neall

PS: I'm rooted and fully debloated. Doesn't help.
PPS: Also made nandroid backup and reflashed SBF to 5.6890. Then, installed ONLY yahoo and skype, then did the camera trick after 24 hours. Yahoo and Skype processes were killed as before. It's not about the number of apps I have running. This phone, given its 512 Mb memory & Gingerbread, has insufficient memory, IMHO.

 

[Htown315]

The only way around this is to freeze the FB app with tibu when not in use. If you care about notifications you can use your email to notify you that is linked to FB. I was really pissed when Facebook turned into a rogue app myself.

 

[spillner]

Wow, you guys must have the worst luck. So I ran the camera app and saw all the apps that needed to be the restarted and guess what? Phone ran fine and went back to the way it was prior to running the camera. Every process started over again that was killed.

How often do you use the camera anyway?

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[MinionOfEckerd]

I reinstalled Facebook onto my D3 after installing a new ROM (Hadn't installed it for about a week) and after installing it, my battery would drain so much faster. For some reason Facebook was constantly running, constantly updating GPS even though I turned off notifications. This resulted in 30-40% of my battery usage being Facebook (with me using for maybe 5 minutes tops) So in the end, I uninstalled it. Anybody else run into this problem?

 

[Alcapwn89]

I have not run into any problems with facebook and memory/battery issues on either my X2 or my Droid 3.

I've seen some people report that facebook sometimes keeps a lock on the GPS which will cause battery drain, but that hasn't happened to me yet. I actually like the official facebook app a lot.

 

[Skurvy_Pirate]

Its not an issue of running out or RAM really (although I have been getting launcher redraws latey), but that ONE app is using 40mb of RAM in the background. That is just an incredibly poorly programmed app. Even apps you would expect to eat up space stay in a 5mb footprint. I think it is unacceptable that an app is using that much RAM. All it really. Needs to be doing is checking for notifications occasionally. I really miss Bloo.....

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[BayouFlyFisher]

Its not an issue of running out or RAM really (although I have been getting launcher redraws latey), but that ONE app is using 40mb of RAM in the background. That is just an incredibly poorly programmed app. Even apps you would expect to eat up space stay in a 5mb footprint. I think it is unacceptable that an app is using that much RAM. All it really. Needs to be doing is checking for notifications occasionally. I really miss Bloo.....

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From Post #2 of this thread:

"An app can stay "running" in the background without any processes eating up your phone's resources. Android keeps the app in its memory so it launches more quickly and returns to its prior state. When your phone runs out of memory, Android will automatically start killing tasks on its own, starting with ones that you haven't used in awhile.
The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck."

Redraws: if you are having launcher redraws you should try switching to a different launcher. Zeam is a launcher with a very small foot print. And uses very few system resources.

 

[Skurvy_Pirate]

I know how Android memory management works, I wasn't saying that it was bad to have most of your memory being used, I was saying that from a developer standpoint, it is bad programming that one app is taking up so much memory (over 4x more then the next highest app). On the Launcher point, it shouldn't be getting killed at all when things such as Facebook are using 40mb of RAM. The whole point of the way Android manages memory is basically what you have quoted, but when things that are important such as the launcher are getting killed then there is a problem. I have used LauncherPro in the past and it has been a great app. I will probably start using it again, but I think that the stock launcher shouldn't be getting force closed, and things like one app needlessly taking up so much RAM doesn't help.