Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman@androiddev.social)
androiddev.social
Attached: 1 image Android 14 seems to have quietly eliminated a trick some apps were using to keep themselves alive when the OS tried to kill them. As spotted by Greenify developer Oasis Feng, Android now freezes a package's cgroup before killing it. Control groups (cgroups) is a Linux kernel feature that organizes processes into groups so their resource usage can be monitored/controlled. (1/6)
  • Tier 1 Build-A-Bear 🧸English
    56•8 months ago

    I seriously don’t get why this can no longer be controlled by the user. I like my weather and music to be readily available, everything else can be killed

    • @limerod@reddthat.comOPEnglish
      36•8 months ago

      Android already has a setting for that. Disable battery optimization for apps you want to run in the background. Samsung goes much further with their sleeping, deep sleeping, and never sleeping lists.

          • @limerod@reddthat.comOPEnglish
            2•8 months ago

            This has not been true for me since oneui 4 and currently oneui 5. Apps can continue running however long within reason(doze). The ones that need to be running 24/7 like accubattery, tasker work fine when you set battery optimization to unrestricted. Others like adguard power through without issue. Only apps that take too many resources or frequent crashes that slow down your device get automatically closed — shown in device care. The only times my apps restart is when running heavy games and apps that take gigs in memory.

    • @PrefersAwkward@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11•8 months ago

      I think two great ways to manage this are

      1: using permissions the user can see and grant/deny “Allow persistent background usage” or something like that with a tooltip or something that warms the user about resource usage. IIRC, this is already a thing in Android 14.

      2: providing visibility into background app usage and history. They do this to some degree, but it’s not as good as it could be. Especially when I want to know what is draining my battery when my phone is in my pocket.

      • @dan1101@lemm.eeEnglish
        2•8 months ago

        It would be good to protect against malware. Bad for apps you legitimately want to run in the background. As usual it seems like a tradeoff between giving the user a choice while not overwhelming uninformed users.

          • @MarkaosEnglish
            1•8 months ago

            Navigate to the specific app details in settings -> Battery usage -> set to Unrestricted. There, it’s off. Just like it was for the past however many years since Doze was first implemented. Or just turn off adaptive battery to disable this for all apps and enjoy your awesome battery life.

            This fix is for apps that are set to optimized/restricted and are avoiding being killed.

              • @MarkaosEnglish
                1•8 months ago

                Does your phone happen to be made by one of the vendors ranking high on this list? If so, that’s not on Google (well, you could argue that Google could take more control over Android and force vendors not to do this, but that’s another discussion - now we’re talking about a fix Google made for apps evading its battery optimizations).

                Because I’ve personally had no problem with apps like AccuBattery and GadgetBridge staying awake when set to unrestricted.

  • @smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    11•8 months ago

    This really was a trick and was mostly exploited.

    An app that actually needs being in the background would just show a persistant notification.