

When an app does something you don't like, whether running in the background on startup or something else, your first option is to uninstall it. If you're sure you want to make this app stop at all costs, you can try these methods. If you've got a rogue service you may want to try one of the solutions below.

However, poorly designed services may run more often or perform syncing operations that you don't want, affecting battery life and your data usage. Well-designed services spend most of their time sleeping, waking up for the occasional check (new social media notifications, for example). If the app in background is running a service, that may be a different story. If battery life or CPU performance is your concern, you don't need to worry about these apps! You don't need to worry about memory, either Android will automatically kill the app and free the memory if the system is running low. Activities are usually not able to run computations in the background, so no CPU or battery is used for them. Activities consume some memory, so that you can go back to the app and pick up where you left off. Most apps (e.g., ones you launch manually) have their current Activity put into the background when you switch to another app or the homescreen. See also: Do I really need to install a task manager? You may have some misconceptions about how Android works and what's really happening when a service is running or an app is in the background.
