Task Manager

Posted by: Androabby June 3, 2011 in Android App Reviews, Productivity Leave a comment

One of the strengths of the Android system is multitasking. However, when you exit an app it doesn’t necessarily mean it no longer runs in the background. The majority of apps still run silently behind the scenes. Unfortunately this can lead to performance issues, battery consumption and other problems. It rarely is the case, but it does happen. Task Manager addresses these issues by allowing to terminate any running app with just a tap.

The app has just one main screen that displays all the running tasks. This list can be customized to include system tasks and to exclude others (ignore list). A search box is available at the top and a check box for selecting each app. Note, even Task Manager appears in this list but killing it does not exit the app or remove it from the list.

You may kill all the apps at once with the Kill Select button or one at a time by tapping its name. Another nice feature is the Auto-Kill. When an app is in the auto-kill list, Task Manager will kill the app every time the screen turns off, without the need for the user to do anything.

The menu key pops up 6 options. The first 4 are for managing the ignore and auto-kill lists. There 5th takes you to a help screen that is very generous in size and contains everything there is to know about the app, including screenshots. This is one of the best documented apps out there. The last one is the preference screen that allows small tweaks.

The app comes along with a small widget (only takes up one icon space) that displays the amount of free memory available. It can be customized from within the application’s preference screen to either kill all running tasks or simply launch the app when tapped. The refresh interval can also be customized from 5 seconds to 5 minutes or never.