Closing and deleting apps

[aminaked]

You seem to be having some problems adjusting to the X coming from an iPhone. My girlfriend recently made the switch and it does take time to adjust.

As far as the app that you installed and that kept running, that's just the nature of some apps. If the app is crap, you should just uninstall it and complain.

As far as "notification settings every time" you install an app, I'm not sure what you mean. You don't like being notified when the app has installed? What does that have to do with DLNA?

 

[mwhartman]

Not familiar with DLNA but check the notifications and if they are not something you wish to receive on a continuing basis disable.

DLNA shares video and such wirelessly with computers, TVs, game systems, etc, that support it, like PS3 and Xbox 360. So every time I come in my house the DLNA thing comes up saying it found a compatible device. Seems annoying to have to go through the notification settings every time I install an app.

You do not need to go through the notifications setting every time. If you want to disable the notifications then uncheck that particular setting and you will not receive any additional notifications.

Mike

 

[philnolan3d]

Well I keep hearing "if you don't want it to notify you change the settings" so it sounds like I have to do that for every app. Maybe not change them, but at least think about whether I need to change it or not. It has nothing to do with DLNA in particular, DLNA is just one example of needing to change the settings.

You do not need to go through the notifications setting every time. If you want to disable the notifications then uncheck that particular setting and you will not receive any additional notifications.

Is that going to disable them while I'm using the app too? It seems simple enough to have notifications while you're using the app, but not have them when you stop using the app.

And yes it is very strange coming from an iPhone. There I choose if I want to leave something running in the background. But if I don't specifically say I want to leave it running, then closing it, closes it. Not just the iPhone though, in any OS it seems strange to leave an app running when you're not using it.

 

[harrellj]

The notifications are there for when you're not on the app to know that something happened that you might be interested in (new voicemail/email/post to facebook/twitter/etc). A common suggestion on this forum for those who aren't using stock email or stock messaging is to go into the stock apps and disable their notifications and just use the downloaded 3rd party app instead with full out notifications. This prevents getting double notifications of updates, which is admittedly annoying.

Along those lines, most apps that do provide notifications do so because they're running in the background so you can stay connected (for always getting a new tweet, etc). If you want to check the apps on your own schedule, you could just open them manually and have notifications disabled.

As for closing an app, it depends on the app and the developer. Some have an option to exit when you hit the menu button. Others require you to hit back until you're as far back as it'll go and then the next tap on back is the exit (looking at file managers here). Dolphin HD (the browser I use) does the tap back forever but it also will give you an exit option if you long press on back.

To uninstall apps, you can do it through the market, but if you go to settings, there's an applications section and within that has manage applications. This is another place to uninstall apps.

 

[philnolan3d]

Thanks for the tips. It's a shame there's no standard for something that I would expect every app to do. Like clicking the little X in the corner of a Windows app or the red dot in a mac app. It's the same on pretty much every single program.

 

[gonnadie4thegov]

Delete advanced task killer

When you "kill" the app android reopens it to sit in idle. Killing apps is unnatural to android as the OS handles that itself so you are just wasting time and battery power

 

[philnolan3d]

I did notice that I killed all the running apps then reopened ATK and they were all opened again.

I also just noticed something relating to the tip I just got about the back button. I had the TV Guide app open and hit "back". It asked "are you sure you want to close this?" and I clicked OK, but then looking in ATK I could see that even though I said that, it was apparently still running.

 

[aminaked]

Don't like the way an app acts? Say it notifies you too much, for example. Go into the apps settings and tell it not to notify you. Alternatively, uninstall the thing and complain to the dev.

Done using an app? Use it's quit/exit/close button if it has one. Usually, that's not even necessary. One exception is Navigation, which uses GPS.

When you're done using apps, they sit idly in memory. If they aren't using CPU then they aren't using your battery and you can ignore them.

All of this takes some getting used to, but it works.

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

I did notice that I killed all the running apps then reopened ATK and they were all opened again.

I also just noticed something relating to the tip I just got about the back button. I had the TV Guide app open and hit "back". It asked "are you sure you want to close this?" and I clicked OK, but then looking in ATK I could see that even though I said that, it was apparently still running.

Everyone else is going to groan that I'm posting this again, but you obviously have never seen it:

From Google Devs:
Android was designed from the ground up as an operating system (OS) for mobile devices. Its built-in application and memory-management systems were engineered with battery life as one of the most critical concerns.
The Android OS does not work like a desktop operating system. On a desktop OS, like Windows, Mac OS X, or Ubuntu Linux, the user is responsible for closing programs in order to keep a reasonable amount of memory available. On Android, this is not the case. The OS itself automatically removes programs from memory as memory is needed. The OS may also preload applications into memory which it thinks might soon be needed.
Having lots of available empty memory is not a good thing. It takes the same amount of power to hold "nothing" in memory as it does to hold actual data. So, like every other operating system in use today, Android does its best to keep as much important/likely-to-be-used information in memory as possible.
As such, using a task manager/killer to constantly clear memory by killing apps is strongly NOT RECOMMENDED. Generally speaking, you should only "End" applications if you see one which is not working correctly.