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TasKiller

Posted Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 4:55 am by Dan @ Appnoodle 20 Comments
TasKiller
1 Android Tapp2 Android Tapps3 Android Tapps4 Android Tapps5 Android Tapps User Rating3.50/5

The full version of TasKiller let you close (kill) your running applications in one click, Switch between apps and have unlimited ignored apps in your ignore list. Free memory and keep your android fast.

Price: Free, €0.70

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Most people who come to Android from a desktop environment find it a bit odd that you’re not required to shut down applications once you’ve finished using them. This is because Android terminates apps automatically when internal memory is getting low. Until that point they remain resident.

Sometimes though, it’s helpful to force close apps you’re not using to free memory, extend battery life and improve performance. You can do this via the settings menu on the phone with the following method:

Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> (wait for list to load…) -> (select app) ->Force Stop

Not exactly convenient then…

The alternative is to download TasKiller from the market and use that instead.

Features

Nothing too complicated here. On firing up the app you’re presented with a colour coded list of running apps which you can click to close.

  • White – application is in memory but not consuming CPU resources
  • Grey – background service
  • Yellow – app is active and using the CPU

A long click on a list item pops up a menu option to open the app or set to ignore (so it doesn’t appear in the list). There’s a prominent kill all button too within the app or you can add the TasKiller Android widget to your home screen. One click of the widget and all your (non-ignored) apps are terminated in one go. Handy.

There are free and paid for versions of TasKiller although the only difference appears to be the limit of 2 apps you can have in your ignore list in the free version.

Usefulness

Very useful app to have on your phone but particularly if you’re a power user.

Ease of Use

TasKiller is very simple to use.

Frequency Used

Useful several times a day.

Interface

Nothing spectacular but it does the job.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

AndroidTapp.com Rating!AndroidTapp.com Rating!AndroidTapp.com Rating!AndroidTapp.com Rating!AndroidTapp.com Rating! (4.0 out of 5)

Should you download TasKiller? Yes! Do the developer a favour and get the paid version.

Dan is an occasional guest reviewer from www.appnoodle.com. You can follow appnoodle on Twitter at http://twitter.com/appnoodle

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20 Responses to “TasKiller”

  1. Gökdeniz Karadağ says:

    “Advanced Task killer” is a free application that does the same job. (It does not have a desktop widget tough)

    • Yep, there are a number of similar apps and I’m not necessarily saying this is the best but it does do a good job.

      The widget is available in the free version and is actually very useful because you can close everything in one go.

    • Jon says:

      I tried using Advanced Task Killer- but half of my running apps didn’t even show up on the list! With taskiller, everything shows up… that I know of.

  2. dommafia says:

    Nice review, this app as become a must have.

  3. LadyDi says:

    Personally, this is one of my favorite apps. I never knew so much was running. I had 10 as at one point. Thanks for the review!!

  4. zuBdo says:

    A must have for G1 users. This app frees up my phone from apps running in the background. You can kill one app at a time or all of them.. Even taskiller…LOL
    5stars***** Plus has a widget… click and enjoy the G1 experience

  5. George in Texas says:

    I like it, but it locks up whenever the widget shows 5 applications open or it shows an X… meaning 5 applications or more.

    I was planning on buying it, but this is a major problem. I’m having to reboot the phone about twice a day…

  6. Lady Di says:

    Had it but I liked Advanced Task Killer better, much. I like the check box thingy as opposed to tap each one to make them close.

  7. Glitch says:

    I know this probably isn’t the best place to rant, but I think Google could have done (and hopefully will) do a better job optimizing memory management on the Android. I know there has to be some sort of sweet spot in between Apple’s method of forcing apps to close to for battery/performance/security reasons, and Google’s method of just allowing everything to run at once until you need more memory. This is a damn shame.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. [...] confirm this one way or the other because the process doesn’t currently show up in Taskiller on my phone and yet the headphones still work fine.  I remember seeing it on the list earlier and [...]

  2. [...] is no equivalent (that I have found so far) on Android.  So, what you need is a task manager and taskiller does the job nicely – now I can shutdown applications whenever I [...]

  3. [...] problem! I just had a quick search to find out more about this and read the following on TasKiller Android App Review by AndroidTapp.com | Android Tapp. Android App Reviews – "Most people who come to Android from a desktop environment find it a bit odd that [...]

  4. [...] TasKiller: Though they offer a paid version, I’ve found no reason to go beyond free.  Android leaves [...]

  5. [...] Taskiller: aplicación que permite forzar el cierre de otras aplicaciones que han quedado abiertas en el teléfono y están consumiendo recursos del mismo. [...]

  6. [...] did find an app that turns off all other apps that may be running in the background. Unfortunately after installing [...]

  7. [...] Advanced Task Killer Android App allows you to stop running background processes or apps in memory. The Android operating system can run multiple apps in memory concurrently which currently is its own Gift and Curse. Cursed… as some processes and apps can bring an Android phone performance to a crawl. [...]

  8. [...] not sure what to call this memory, but usually when I kill apps using apps like Taskiller there is between 30-75MB of memory that can be freed up. Now it’s up to [...]

  9. Dee'tjes says:

    [...] en stopt er dan niet mee, ook niet als je naar een andere app gaat. Aan te bevelen is dus wel om TasKiller op je systeem te hebben: die app kun je gebruiken om applicaties te sluiten die je niet nodig hebt [...]

  10. [...] Taskiller: Any computerized device needs the ability to kill a task. It’s not just the Control-Alt-Delete of apps. Since Android’s internal memory management decides when to shutdown an app, preemptively closing apps can free up memory and speed up performance on your mobile device. [...]

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