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Does one really need to install a task manager? My phone does slowdown on rare occasions but it's not something that hampers regular usage.

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100% accept rate
lifehacker.com/5862994/… – Al Everett Nov 28 '11 at 17:17
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5 Answers

up vote 44 down vote accepted

See this

http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/

As Android was designed you don't need to kill apps.

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This does depends on the apps you're running. As soon as you launch an always on cpu or disk traffic heavy app you might notice some slowdowns wich do go away after using a task killer. – Barfieldmv Sep 20 '10 at 12:21
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It's only natural that some people find it hard to accept that this is something the system can really take care of for you. That is because no known systems currently work like this, mostly because of a historical legacy. But it really works like that. No need for a task manager! Let go of your fears... In fact all task managers are, to some degree, hacks, that create other side-effects. – pjv Mar 7 '11 at 19:37
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up vote 12 down vote

No, and even more so with the latest 2.2 versions of Android. I used to use them, but I've stopped and everything has been better since I stopped using a task manager/killer. There is an app called Watchdog if you'd like to be notified about a process using a ton of CPU for a long period of time, which then will give you the option to kill that run-away process.

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up vote 3 down vote

Sometimes when an app crashes or gets to a state that it's not response it's nice to be able to shut it down manually . . . but as for slowness issues a task manager isn't necessary as the OS itself handles multitasking better now.

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I will add that, sometimes apps do need to be closed but you can typically do that within the OS. You do not need a Task Manager to close apps, you can go to Settings > Applications > Running Services (may be different depending on OS version). From the menu you can press Force Quit. – jonesdavide Sep 13 '10 at 19:27
no need for a task killer to do that Sheldon, just go into the normal settings :D – schwiz Sep 13 '10 at 19:29
I found Advanced Task Killer (even with Ads) to be a nicer UI. However you don't need it. Stock android has all the necessary tools. Kinda same reason I use Uninstaller vs from the application menu, just easier. – Dmitriy Likhten Sep 13 '10 at 21:31
@schwiz Sure, you can go to "Applications" and do a force stop and in fact that's all latest version of "Advanced Task Manager" does but it's nice to see the list of apps currently running instead of all apps. But for the most part the answer is you don't need a task manager. – tooshel Sep 21 '10 at 23:12
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up vote 3 down vote

Yes. You should have a task-killer app, but not for the reasons you think.

I've had runaway processes (maybe watchdog can help) like google maps which then ran twice, once to kill my cpu/ram and once to actually work. I had to use the task killer to kill both instances and then run the normal one.

RARELY will you actually need to manually kill anything. But like all programs, sometimes stuff happens. I've had apps crash the entire phone and they were not running in root or anything.

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up vote 1 down vote

When I was running Froyo, I installed task manager not to kill tasks, but to find an easy to review list of what is running and learn more about how apps work. This seemed the easiest way to learn what was running quickly.

Now that I have Gingerbread, I just use the "running" list under applications in the settings menu.

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In Gingerbread, the Running Services part of the "Applications" list in Settings tells you which apps have background services running, no need for 3rd party tools. – GAThrawn Aug 17 '11 at 12:56
@GAThrawn Good point. I answered before I had Gingerbread. – Alex B Aug 18 '11 at 17:51
I upvoted because I don't think it deserves a downvote. I don't think the answer is wrong, especially considering that some phones (i.e. Samsung Captivate) just got Gingerbread in the U.S. via official channels. – Chance Feb 7 at 18:34
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