Nook HD+ How do I close/manage apps?

[JeremyR]

Some (most?) apps don't seem to have a close or quit button, so they seem to keep running in the background.

How can I tell what is running, and is there a way to close things rather than just go to the home screen and run something else at the same time.

[booklover6]

Advanced Task Killer is the one I use for tablets. Play link.

[Rbneader]

I haven't found this to be a big problem, so I didn't bother with a task killer. If you reboot once every few days that will wipe out all apps still running.

[Xanthe]

My understanding of the process:

Android operates differently from Windows. When you leave most applications, they go into a sleep state and remain in memory. If you haven't used them in a while, they get supplanted by applications you've used more recently; that is done automatically. Unlike Windows, having your RAM filled is not a bad thing - it just means the recently-used programs or those that need to update frequently (some news sites, for example) start quicker. Apps that do various scans wake and sleep on their own.

You don't really need to use an app killer unless one of your programs is misbehaving, and you want to kill it to allow it to later restart hopefully without whatever the problem was.

Check the settings/preferences on your various apps. More of them now have a "show exit"-type choice for those more used to having that, than the first Android apps did. But it's not really necessary in Android.

[afv011]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

Some (most?) apps don't seem to have a close or quit button, so they seem to keep running in the background.

This is the Android way, close buttons should not be added to apps. As others have said, the OS handles memory, keeping apps loaded in memory so you can quickly switch back to them. When not in the foreground apps are paused, though the OS gives apps the option to have long running services to do background work, for instance a news app could fetch news articles at periodic intervals. Unless an app is misbehaving (in which case you're better off uninstalling it), there's no need to manually manage apps.

[jgaiser]

From Wikipedia (emphasis mine)

Memory management

Since Android devices are usually battery-powered, Android is designed to manage memory (RAM) to keep power consumption at a minimum, in contrast to desktop operating systems which generally assume they are connected to unlimited mains electricity. When an Android app is no longer in use, the system will automatically suspend it in memory - while the app is still technically "open," suspended apps consume no resources (e.g. battery power or processing power) and sit idly in the background until needed again. This has the dual benefit of increasing the general responsiveness of Android devices, since apps don't need to be closed and reopened from scratch each time, but also ensuring background apps don't waste power needlessly.[84]

Android manages the apps stored in memory automatically: when memory is low, the system will begin killing apps and processes that have been inactive for a while, in reverse order since they were last used (i.e. oldest first). This process is designed to be invisible to the user, such that users do not need to manage memory or the killing of apps themselves.[85] However, confusion over Android memory management has resulted in third-party task killers becoming popular on the Google Play store; these third-party task killers are generally regarded as doing more harm than good.[86]