One of the great strengths of Android is its true multitasking function. In other words, it allows you to keep several applications running at the same time. This facilitates and allows to squeeze to the maximum the smartphones or tablets that work under the Android umbrella, but it also carries with it a great use of RAM and CPU. Consequence: uncontrolled battery consumption when multiple processes are running.
Some of these processes usually correspond to the apps that we are running at the moment, but others are nothing more than applications that we are not using and that are working in the background. Why not send those apps to hibernate and thus save CPU and RAM consumption that they actively and passively generate?
That is precisely what it is designed for Greenify. An app that allows you to put into hibernation all those apps that we are not using and that consume battery. This way we avoid unnecessary expenses and we can make our phone last at least until the end of the day.
Until recently we needed root permissions to be able to use Greenify to its full power, but for a couple of years it has worked perfectly without these permissions. In addition, it is a highly valued app in the Android community (1st place in the “Utilities” category in Lifehacker’s 2013 Best Android Apps and 3rd place in Android Authority’s Best Root Apps), so let's give it a try and see what it offers.
What exactly does Greenify do?
With the classic task manager, when we "kill" an application it simply closes, automatically reopening whenever another program "calls" it (or we open it ourselves). Greenify, on the other hand, what it does is leave the app in hibernation mode: does not close the program but prevents it from running any background processes, thus achieving the desired battery saving.
How does it work?
The main screen is divided into 2 groups:
- Pending manual hibernation: List of apps that are running in the background, and that have a potential for high battery consumption. If we want to put these apps into hibernation, we just have to press the green "Zzz" button that appears just in the lower right part. If we want to send some apps to sleep but we want to keep others active then we must first click on the app, select it and then click on the hibernate button.
- In hibernation: Apps that are not stopped but whose processes are stopped. All those apps that we are not running at the moment should appear in this list.
In addition to these apps there may also be another series of apps that are running on your Android, and that we can manage if we click on the “+”That appears in the upper right corner of the screen.
- It could slow down the device: Here what we see is a list of other apps that are also running in the background, but due to their low consumption, they do not appear in the main list. If we want to put any of these apps to hibernate we just have to select it and click on the green “OK” icon so that it appears in the main list and we can put it to sleep as we have done with the other apps previously.
- Plus: The apps that appear in this list are not running at the moment.
More settings
If we click on the menu icon in the upper right (3 points one above the other) we have several options:
- To update: Updates the status of running and hibernating apps.
- Put into hibernation now: What its own name indicates. Puts all apps on the "Manual hibernation pending" list to sleep
- Create hibernating shortcut: Creates a shortcut on the desktop that with a single click executes the hibernation process on all potential apps automatically.
- Settings: The settings section has several interesting options
- Automated hibernation: If we activate this option, whenever the screen of our phone turns off, after a few minutes, it sends all the apps to hibernate.
- Don't delete notifications: If we want to keep notifications even if an app is hibernating, we can avoid it by activating this option.
- Xposed-based features: If we have root permissions on our device we can install Xposed Framework and get even more out of Greenify, such as allowing telephone events to activate hibernating applications or blocking memory abuse of certain apps.
How do you see Greenify is a very complete app that uses a very intelligent system to save and make better use of battery consumption. If you want to try it and give it a try HERE I leave you the download link.
