You may experience memory problems on your old Android phone or when playing the latest mobile games. So what to do in this case? Let’s look at some ways to manage RAM on Android below.
Unless you have an old Android phone, you won’t need to do memory management. Most mid-range devices from the past few years have at least 4GB of RAM. A flagship from 2019 like the OnePlus 7 Pro or the Galaxy Note 10 Plus has up to 12GB of memory. You will never need to manage memory on these devices.
In general, Android is very efficient in handling memory. If you check and find that most of the available RAM is being used, then don’t worry because this is how it was designed to work. Android tries to keep apps in memory for as long as possible so they can start up immediately when you need them.
If and when it needs to free up more memory, the system will quietly close some recently unused apps in the background.
So you don’t need to manage memory if the phone already has enough. But how much RAM is enough?
To some extent, it depends on how you use your phone. If you mainly do web browsing and social media use, you won’t need as much RAM as when playing PUBG or Call of Duty.
For the 2019 flagships, Google offers 6GB for Pixel while Samsung has 8GB for Galaxy 10. The 4GB figure is still enough for all users including the most demanding and even 3GB is enough for light usage. .
Android and Google Play Services will use about 1.5GB of memory and they run frequently. A game like PUBG that will use over 1GB or even several browser tabs open at the same time can take up the same amount of memory.
The key to memory management is figuring out how it’s being used and which apps are taking up the most memory. You can find this out with the Memory tool introduced in Android 6 Marshmallow.
Depending on the Android version you use, the way to access this tool is different:
Here, you can see the average RAM usage for the last three hours and the most recent day. Tap on Memory used by apps for a full breakdown of the apps that use the most RAM. This will help you identify RAM-hungry programs and possibly replace them with better performing software.
For years, we’ve known that task killer apps aren’t good for Android. However, there is still a large number on the Play Store, which continues to achieve dozens of downloads.
Again, these apps don’t make the phone faster, not even RAM boosters or other types that promise performance improvements.
With that said, Android handles apps and memory efficiently, so force closing the app interferes with this process. It also makes apps start up slower and wastes processor and battery power.
What’s worse is that some apps are designed to run in the background. Turning them off with this app only causes them to reopen immediately. This also wastes more resources when you leave them in the background.
If you need to close the app, do it manually. Tap the Recents button at the bottom of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom if using the new Android gesture. When the list of recent apps appears, close the apps you no longer need by swiping them away.
If your phone is low on memory usage, you can improve it by limiting the amount of memory used.
This is not always easy. Apps like Facebook and Snapchat are well-known resource-intensive apps, but there’s no alternative. However, there are a few steps you can take to reduce memory usage:
When Google launched Android Go for low-end phones, it also released a series of lightweight Android Go apps as alternatives to many popular apps. You don’t need a Go phone to use these apps, they work on Android devices and use less RAM.
There are several options for you to use:
When installing these apps, you can disable full capacity apps from using the apps mentioned above. You usually can’t completely uninstall these built-in apps.
You don’t have to stick with the official Google apps as smaller, faster alternatives can be found.
For example, Chrome is a “RAM hog” a lot, but you can easily replace them with another browser like Kiwi Browser. It’s a browser based on the same Chromium rendering engine, so the site looks the same and it uses less memory.
Now you know how to manage RAM on your phone, what to avoid, and how to get the most out of your device.
Wishing you success!