I noticed that all the apps on my Pixel 8 has the “Allow background usage” option enabled. Didn’t this use to be an opt-in setting?
I’m worried that something got messed up when I had to do a copy from my Pixel 8 (Android 15) to my old Pixel 5 (Android 14) and back to my Pixel 8 again (I had to factory reset my Pixel 8 before sending it in for repair).
Tap on an app there. There are three settings. “disabled” for basically freezing apps once they’re no longer in the foreground, "enabled“ for doing things like occasionally checking for content updates j the background and playing music while other apps are on the forefront, and “unlimited” for the setting you’re thinking off, which badly designed apps often need to not be killed when they keep hitting the CPU in the background while the user hasn’t interacted with them for ages.
Other manufacturers have even worse appp killers.
Ahh, yes - you’re right, I was mistaken the “Allow background usage” with the “Unrestricted” background usage.
The Pixel settings are a bit ‘funny’: it’s an on/off toggle for “Allow background usage”, but when it’s enabled you can actually click on the settings text itself, and go into a submenu, where you can choose between “Optimized” and “Unrestricted” (“Optimized” is the default for apps that are allowed background usage).
Thanks for all your help!
Didn’t this use to be an opt-in setting?
No. It’s the life blood of Google’s tracking ethos so it was always opt out on google’s phones. It’s so important to google that they’ll reset these permissions to “enabled” for all apps on system updates, so you won’t notice it until way later.
Damn their oily hides!!
I don’t think so. I have Grapheneos on my Pixel 8 and it appears to be granted by default. I just installed a new app and without explicitly granting permission it was there.
You can turn it off if you want, but most apps are well-behaved in this respect.
Where is that permission, I don’t see it in the Permission Manager on my Pixel 8?
It’s in “Settings”->“Apps”, select you app then, “App battery usage” - When enabled, you can press the text and choose between “Optimised” (‘Optimise based on your usage. recommended for most apps.’) and “Unrestricted” (‘Allow battery usage in background without restrictions. May use more battery.’) - At least that is how it’s organized on the Pixel 8.
It’s on by default for newly installed apps.
It’s one of the things I manually disable for pretty much all apps.
I also use Greenify and disable Shallow Hibernation/Background Free, because those don’t make apps restore any faster (because current phones have sufficiently fast ram/cpu), but it does eventually slow my phone down because I switch apps heavily (I’ve done a LOT of testing with this) and it takes references in memory for page swapping type activities.
I don’t have a Pixel 8 but that sounds highly unusual. I suspect you’re right, maybe the option didn’t exist in the same way on Android 14 and so it’s copied over in a weird way.
I don’t know a way to fix them other than just updating them all one by one. In recent Android versions the app can prompt you if it’s missing the settings so it should be pretty safe to just disable it for everything that doesn’t obviously need background usage.
Thanks. I might just do that.
I was wondering if the system is doing some kind of app profiling, and if it automatically will remove the permission from the apps some time in the future? Like it does with other app permissions on unused apps…
Android by default does remove permissions from unused apps, and the run in background permission is one of the ones it will remove. It doesn’t say on that page but I think the threshold is 3 months.
I would say this is the normal behavior and without this apps wouldn’t work properly or connect in background, ex. to receive messages in chat apps and display a notification ex. when the system wakes them up via push notifications
Yeah, if an app posts any kind of notification it definitely needs background usage permission.
