On a Windows PC, you can see everything running in Task Manager, but on Android it’s a bit trickier – apps constantly stop, close, and wake up, more dynamically. If you want to see which apps are running in the background, one of the best ways is to check the running services.
For some time now, it has been possible to see the services running on an Android mobile from the development options. we will tell you How to verify the data and what exactly are these services? and how they relate to the applications you use every day.
What are the services on an Android mobile
Google defines services in its developer document ation as a component of Android applications that has no interface and can perform long-term operations in the background
Services are essential in Android because can remain active after closing the app, something the system does not take long to do after switching to another application. Thanks to them, you can for example continue to listen to music when you switch to another application or receive WhatsApp messages.
While applications close when you are not using them, services may remain active, be activated periodically or when certain conditions are met.
As a user, we usually don’t have to worry too much about services, unless you are looking to see if an app is spying on you or you have a mobile with very little memory and are looking for which apps are hogging it. The good news is that Android clearly shows what active services does each application have, sometimes clearly explaining why they are there.
How to view running services
Now that we have an idea of what services are on an Android mobile, it’s time to find out how we can take a look at them. For some time now, the list of active processes has been in the developer options.
The way to enable developer options in Android has not changed since Android Jelly Bean and is to go to the system information section of settings and repeatedly tap on the build number. Then the developer options menu will appear, usually in the section General. Among them is Running services.
At the top, graphs are displayed with the system RAM memory and the percentage of it that is currently being used by the system and applications. Just below is the list of currently active applications and the RAM used by each
By tapping any app in the list, you will get more data including the list of services and processes run each of the applications. From the services you can see how long they have been running. Among the processes, how much RAM do they occupy.
Many of these services and processes have an explanatory name that makes it clear why they are there. For example, Gboard has one active service to be the default keyboard app, the launcher has another to handle notification dots and WhatsApp maintains a service to receive new messages.
Generally messing around with services is not recommended of an application, but this same list allows in some cases to go to its settings to disable or stop them manually, which is strongly discouraged because the application to which they belong could no longer function correctly.