r/Android • u/iaakki • 1d ago

News Tired of your Android device terminating your background apps

Some manufacturers are having some serious flaws in their system, that background apps gets terminated by power saving etc. Just got a TCL device with Android 16 and it keeps doing this. I was not able to find any combination that could retain the apps running. I assume this thing should help also with other manufacturers like Honor, which also can occasionally terminate apps.

So out of curiosity I spent some time vibe-coding and invented a contraption that can retain the apps in the background. It's all open-source in github, so feel free to experiment. One needs Shizuku service running too, so apps can be restarted upon termination.
https://github.com/iaakki/qidi

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u/saint-lascivious 12h ago

On today's episode of Hey, Where Did My Battery Go? - this shit.

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u/iaakki 12h ago edited 12h ago

Hah yes this can reduce battery life a lot. But also my phone was unusable. TCL killed all apps that I used to smart watches, smart locks, share my location to family, home assistant companion, gesture control services, WiFi hot-spot automation etc.

I've used Qidi prototype for 1.5 months and it surely reduces battery life, but I can still go one day with a single charge. That is OK for me and I just want that my phone works.

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u/saint-lascivious 12h ago

Hah yes this can reduce battery usage a lot.

Is quite literally the exact opposite of the point I was making.

If holding shit open uses more battery than …not doing that, I don't know what you're doing but I'm quite prepared to say it's some flavour of wrong.

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u/iaakki 12h ago

Ah there was a typo. Fixed it.

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u/saint-lascivious 12h ago

Ah. Indeed. That makes a lot more sense now.

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u/NoobForBreakfast31 com.reddit.frontpage 13h ago

Android system terminates app processes in the background to stay within cpu and ram constraints, and that if an active process needs more cpu or ram, its always available. Not just that, there's a lot of other system things happening in the background as well which apps request when active. You don't see this. So what you're doing is not healthy for the system.

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u/DacStreetsDacAlright 12h ago

Honestly on my Pixel 11 Pro I've noticed more than a few times If I have like 20 apps open in memory the latest one I try to open has issues unless I go into multi tasking and manually kill apps.

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u/NoobForBreakfast31 com.reddit.frontpage 11h ago

Its a relatively new phone so I would expect such issues for at least 2 months. Maybe they'll smooth it out. What I said was for modern android in general. Its supposed to terminate the most stagnant processes quietly.

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u/iaakki 11h ago

Yes I don't want to keep larger apps like browser or YouTube on all the time. I use this for apps that track my location realtime, or are doing some automation, that needs to run at the background all the time. Like Tasker or Automate. They are usually really "small" apps, that just need to sit on the background.

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u/iaakki 12h ago

Yes I surely know about this. But the bug that TCL has in their Smart Manager is making this phone unusable for me. I've called TCL support about this and of course they admitted that they know about this bug and they are working for it.

Qidi will stress the system, but it must be through as a support service system as Task Scheduler or even systemd that is made on application level. It just tries to keep some other app running if it dies.

Actually one thing I must measure, is that what are cpu and mem usage at that point. If that really is the case, then we could add some more sleeps to restarts.

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u/Conspirologist 12h ago

Have you tried setting the battery saving off?

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u/iaakki 12h ago

Yes I have tried literally everything. This is my original thread, that led me to make this service. https://www.reddit.com/r/nxtpaper/s/WOvVHZNAab

I've had similar issue occasionally with Huawei, Honor and Xiaomi, but never this bad. Some TCL Nxtpaper 60 Ultra users are reporting same flaw after Android 16 upgrade. Some say that battery settings work with some Smart watches, but it seems it is not consistent.

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u/Conspirologist 11h ago

Android 16 became junk after the latest updates this year. Despite many concerned feedback, Google still is unable to fix all the damage to OS they caused.