With Android 9 Pie, a few years ago, a new energy saving system arrived, The App Standby Buckets. The literal translation of this function is “Standby application cubes” (although it has arrived in Spain as “Standby applications”) and, as its name suggests, it is responsible for manage the behavior of what background applications can and cannot do.
Today we are going to explain where this setting is located, how you can modify it and what is the use of changing its modes, since it is a function quite hidden among the system settings, although it is enough to follow a few simple steps to find it.
Configuring the App Standby Buckets or standby applications
This setting is within the developer options. To activate them, you must press seven times on the build number from your phone. This is in the section of phone information. Once these options have been activated, in the section system you will find waiting applications.
Now, touch browse these options, which are not exactly scanty. We must go down through the list until we find the subsection of Applications. In it, we will see the option of standby applications. Click here.
This section on standby apps refers to the App Standby Buckets, so let’s remind you what does each of the modes we find here mean. You can also find this information on the Android page itself.
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Active / Active: This includes the applications that are in use or that have been used recently. These applications have no restrictions of any kind.
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Working Set / Task set: applications that are used regularly. This type of application has slight restrictions, focusing on the ability to activate alarms, execute tasks, etc.
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Frequent / Frequent: applications that are used frequently, but not on a daily basis. These applications have stronger limitations, including limiting FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging) messages / Notifications.
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Rare / Uncommon – Apps that are not used often. These applications have even greater limitations than Frequent ones, among which is the ability of the app to connect to the internet.
In addition to these four “cubes”, we find a fifth called ‘Never’ or ‘Never’, which includes quite aggressive limits for these applications.
Having seen this, we can appreciate that the system, on paper, is quite efficient, making the applications we use the most have fewer restrictions, and the ones we use the least, have more capacity. However, being able to configure this section manually can help us save battery.
Many games, for example, are set to ‘Working Set’. By changing them to ‘Frequent’ or ‘Rare’ we can save battery. This example is extrapolated to other apps. For example, we have observed that it is very simple that games fall into the Working Set or Frequent categories, depending on the use we give it. Proposals like Call of duty mobile or PUBG Mobile, for example, they tend to send notifications constantly, so sending them to “Rare” is a good option to save battery.
In the same way, you can carry out the process with any other application that you want to limit. The “deep” the cube, the less energy consumption the app will have when it is not used in the foreground. Note that If you restrict applications that you use daily, you will lose notifications and background functions, so we recommend configuring only those apps whose full functions we do not need throughout the day.
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The news
How to save battery on your Android by configuring standby applications
was originally published in
Xataka Android
for
Ricardo Aguilar
.
