How to stop running Android apps in the background

Most people have had several issues on excessive battery and data consumption due to running apps in the background on their android smartphone. It has become a challenge as most users don't know how to make this stop, hence saving their battery life and data plan becomes impossible.
Many apps that run in the background do so for good reason like providing data location, syncing or otherwise what they were designed to do.


But not always or actually all of them does that as some just run in the background for no exact good reason. Good examples of some of this apps are like Facebook, instagram and other alike apps that still run in the background when you really don't need them.

I for my part don't see any reason why this kind of apps should still be running in the background when I can always log on anytime I want to keep myself updated, the only thing this kind of running apps do is to refresh feeds, updates and the likes which is really of not much importance.
If you want to know which of the apps are running excessive background processes or would like to stop running apps in the background entirely, below is how you can do that so read on.

Battery usage and Process stats

To get to know which apps are running background processes and how power consuming they are, both in terms of battery and processing, Android has the following built in options for monitoring:

- Enable Developer Options
To do this, navigate to Settings on your Android phone>click the About Device and tap the Build number until you are notified that the Developer Options has been enabled.

- Navigate to Settings, then click on Developer Options> Process stats to view how much of the time your key apps are running. Tap any of the apps to see how much RAM it's using.

- Go to Settings> then Battery and tap individual running apps to see their battery consumption.

Running apps in the background which needs to be closed

The main apps which are actually guilty of background memory and battery usage are music players you are not using and games you are not playing. Like I said earlier on, if there's no good reason for an app to run in the background, it would be best for you to close the app.
Generally and important, apps or services which starts with the word Google should be left running, though important/essential services won't let you stop them from running anyway, but the following apps shouldn't be stopped either and allowed to run.

- Google Play services, Google Contacts Sync, Google Keyboard, Google Play Store, Google Search.

The Process stats list will actually help you with which apps you want to leave running in the background based on how much you use them. The list provided above will help to stop services which aren't important such as the Google Play Music.

How to stop, disable and uninstall running apps in the background

If there's an app you have on your Android which you think is using an unreasonable amount of processor power or seems to run in the background more than it should, you can;

- Disable it in your App Manager
Navigate to Settings > Applications > Application manager, tap the app then click on disable.

- Recent apps can be closed by tapping rhe Recent Apps navigation button on your Android phone(to the right of the home button), then swipe left or right to close apps you ran recently.

- Force Stop it
Navigate to Settings > Applications > Application manager, swipe right to the Running tab, tap the app then click Force Stop OR

- From your phone Delete it by navigating to Settings > Applications > Application manager, tap the app then click uninstall.

NOTE: Apps which aren't necessary should be stopped to avoid excessive usage of RAM, battery and prevent your phone from suddenly crashing.

Making use of Greenify

Greenify is an app which allows you put apps to sleep when they are not in use, so to say an hibernation app. It's basically an automated version of force disabling or closing apps every time you stop using them and then turning them back on when you need to make use of them.
Doing all this is quite stressful, hence if you talking about one of the best management apps around, then Greenify is.
You actually need root access for you to get full benefits of Greenify on your Android phone, which simply means your phone needs to be rooted.
For example, non-rooted users won't be able to automatically hibernate apps, but can flick a widget switch simply to put your apps to sleep. If you really care and concerned about your phone in terms of managing your background processes, Greenify would be of good help. Click Greenify for your Android.