Pixel 5 is an Android mobile phone launched by Google Inc in 2017. It has a decent design, better cameras, and high-end specs. But how do you keep up with all the apps draining your battery? Despite what many people think, you don’t need to close every app running in the background when not using it. Only certain apps will continue to use resources (mostly data) until either manually or automatically closed down.
To reduce the number of apps draining your mobile phone’s battery, here are 5 ways to easily close apps running on Pixel 5.
1 – Closing apps through your Power Menu
Probably one of the easiest methods to kill off any app is through this method where you can simply press and hold the power button till the dialog box for Power Menu opens.
From the drop-down menu choose “Close All apps” to shut down all running apps, including system processes. However, this may not be a fast process since it takes time for Pixel 5 to close apps and you will have to wait till it is complete before you can use your phone again. And if you’re looking for a more advanced technique or want to kill a particular set of apps then read on because there are other ways as well.
2 – Closing apps from Multitasking Window
The multitasking window gives you a quick glance at all the recent activities performed on your phone – from calls to browsing through social media platforms – giving an idea about what exactly happened at that point in time. This feature is useful when you want to get back to something you were doing previously but can be really annoying too.
Now, open any app on your mobile phone and then tap the “Recent apps” button (the rectangular icon with 3 circles). Drag that particular window up slightly till it opens into a card view. This reveals all the recently used apps in form of cards.
Long press on any activity (card) until options for ‘Close’ or ‘Clear all’ appear. Now, these two options are where things start getting interesting because while ‘Close’ only ends the specific app, ‘Clear All’ closes down everything which means all visible windows will be closed at once (and even other applications running in the background).
3 – Closing apps from Settings
This is another effective and efficient way to close apps. Simply go to the settings menu, open ‘Apps’, and select any app you wish to kill. From there tap on “Force Stop”. If you want to see which processes are currently active for an app, choose “Show Processes from All Users” as that will list all of them including system processes as well as those running under your Google accounts or other users of your device.
4 – Closing apps using the Recent Applications Button
If multitasking window, task manager, and forcing stop didn’t work then don’t worry because now we have a new kid on the block – the recent applications button.
While using any app on your mobile phone, simply tap the ‘recent applications’ button (the one with 3 lines located next to the home button). This opens a list of all recently used apps.
Long press on any app until a context menu appears from where you can choose ‘Close’ or ‘Clear All’.
In case you have paused running tasks that you want to continue then just select ‘Resume’. In fact, if there are certain activities that seem suspiciously misbehaving, always choose to ‘Force Stop’ instead of closing them down gracefully.
5 – Closing apps using Task Manager
There is also an option in the Pixel 5 task manager which allows you to kill off apps running in the background. To open task manager, press and hold the ‘home’ button (at the bottom) which will open up a list of all apps currently running followed by those that are inactive but still continue draining resources.
The task manager gives you an overview of all the processes (apps & system) currently active on your mobile phone.
To kill off any app or process simply select it from the list and choose either ‘Force Stop’ or ‘Clear’. It’s probably best to use this technique if you want to quickly free up some memory on your device because using the notification bar (home button) doesn’t do anything except for closing down individual activities like email, web browsing, etc.
But if you want to cut down battery consumption then try running task manager and tap the ‘Clear All’ button as that will close down everything else except those currently active.
But there is a drawback too – the recent applications button doesn’t work if all apps are closed out completely which means you will lose access to the phone’s home screen and any other recently used app (including settings & task manager).
Frequently Asked Questions
1 – How do I clear all apps in Pixel 5?
Open the Recent Applications button, then tap on Clear all. Alternatively, go to Settings > Apps & notifications > See all X apps. This is possible with any phone that has Marshmallow OS or higher. But if your mobile phone runs Android Lollipop 5.0 or older.
2 – Why is my Pixel 5 Slow?
If your Google Pixel 5 runs slow or freezes randomly, the easiest solution is to clear cached app data. In most cases, it will solve temporary performance issues and even crashes if any background processes are misbehaving.
Conclusion:
As you can see there are several ways to kill off all apps simultaneously on the Google Pixel 5. Use this guide anytime you want to make sure no background activity is eating up your phone’s memory or battery life.
