With its beautiful new design and powerful 8-core processor, the Samsung Galaxy S6 is one of the best and fastest smartphones on the planet. With multi-window mode, it can multitask and open a wide variety of apps, including two apps at the same time. However, there will be times when users will want to close apps on the Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge, and we’ll explain how to do that below.
The simple action of deleting or closing unused apps may seem too common and straightforward to average users, but smartphone owners switching from iPhone for the first time will need to know how to perform such a task on their new Galaxy S6.
Now that the Galaxy S6 has been on the market for about two months, we’ve been getting a lot of questions and one of them is about closing unused apps. It is extremely easy to close and clear apps on the Galaxy S6 to improve performance and battery life, so read on for simple instructions.
Samsung’s phone has a fast octa-core processor and 3GB of RAM that can handle just about anything, but we’ll go over how, just in case. The general rule of thumb in Android is to let the operating system manage your memory. However, there are times when a user might want to delete unused apps from memory.
Google’s Android operating system does an excellent job of managing apps and multitasking unlike other operating systems by getting apps ready to take action when needed, and saves battery the rest of the time. However, many users still prefer to close apps manually and here’s how to do it on the Galaxy S6.
Instructions
Clearing apps from memory or multitasking (recent apps) menu on Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge is extremely easy, but it may differ from previous Galaxy devices. There is a dedicated button for all your recent apps and a single clear all button to make everything very easy for the end user.
Simply tap the overlapping rectangle-like button to the left of the dedicated hardware home button. This is the multitasking menu key that brings up all currently used and running applications. For those who don’t know, switching from Facebook to Gmail, then to the browser and back to Facebook with this menu is extremely fast and efficient. However, this is also where a quick swipe will close and kill apps.
When you tap the button to the left of the home button, you will see what is in the image above. This is the recent apps menu. It’s a good idea to leave things like phones, messages, and even browsers here, especially if you use them frequently. Deleting the SMS text app means it will only need to be restarted at your next message, wasting battery and CPU cycles. This same rule applies to all apps, so only turn off the ones you won’t need anymore.
A simple swipe of your finger on each box will swipe them away and instantly close the app. Any saved progress or the website you may be on will have to be reloaded the next time you use that app. The image above shows us swiping to close the menu and the YouTube app. That’s all you have to do to close apps on Galaxy S6.
But sometimes a user may want to delete everything at once. Again, this is not recommended as the OS does a great job keeping most apps in a low power state. If so, simply tap the new “Close all” button at the bottom, which will delete every app currently in system memory. A good time for this would be while you’re at work and you won’t be on your phone, at bedtime, or while driving.
We recommend that you only clean apps you don’t need or system-intensive apps. Something like YouTube, Google Maps (or navigation is a big one), or even Netflix. As they can be killed to protect the battery. In general, there is rarely a need to clear apps on Android devices, especially those as powerful and efficient as the Galaxy S6, but each user can do whatever they want according to their own needs.
Closing all your apps can cause the phone to slow down because it will need to restart certain apps as they are called and will eventually shorten battery life. Again, clear only what is necessary, and often this menu is not as necessary as most people think. For some reason Samsung removed the menu key in favor of it, but for those who want better control, it’s yours now.
In the end, only close the apps you won’t be using in the near future. Users claim all sorts of different results for cleaning apps and using the task manager throughout the day, but use it wisely and feel free to try it yourself today.
