One of the popular types of applications on Android are various “task killers”, which basically close background processes and claim to improve the speed and battery life of the smartphone. Although in reality it often has the opposite effect. After all, the Android operating system is designed in such a way as to put inactive processes into sleep mode, and their closing and subsequent reloading create an additional load on the smartphone. With the release of Android 14, this problem will be solved, reports 9to5google.

In the new version of its operating system, Google will prohibit programs from closing background processes that do not belong to them. Google makes it clear that apps that use the “killBackgroundProcesses” API will no longer be able to “influence the process lifecycle of other apps.” Developers are no longer recommended to use this API, but starting with Android 14, it will return an error on any attempt to close processes for another application.

The error is as follows: Invalid packageName: com.example.anotherapp

For applications that use the “killBackgroundProcesses” API, this change will actually break their functionality because they won’t be able to do what they were designed to do.

Google also notes in its documentation that “it isn’t possible for third-party apps to improve memory, power, or thermal behavior of an Android device,” and recommends that developers review whether their app complies with Google Play’s policy around misleading claims.

It will certainly be interesting to see if this change will lead to the disappearance of “sped boosters” apps and various “task killers” from Google Play. Although one can assume that if it does happen, it will be rather slow considering how long it takes new versions of Android to gain popularity.