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I used to be able to view what apps are running in the background under settings/apps for 5.1, but in 6.0 you can only see what apps are installed in the same location. Does anyone know where to view running apps?

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This is now in the Developer options area of your device settings, under the "Running Services" menu item:

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Note that if you cannot see the Developer options at the bottom of your settings, it is because they are hidden by default and need to be manually enabled.

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    Note that surprisingly this nice feature works even if you (for security reasons) have disabled the overall "Developer options" at the top. You may note that both the running apps list and the inactive apps list at the bottom of the page, does NOT go grey.
    – Eske Rahn
    Commented Aug 2, 2016 at 1:59
  • You sure these are the apps that are in the background? because the caption there is "App RAM usage".
    – TheLogicGuy
    Commented Aug 5, 2016 at 19:10
  • @TheLogicGuy it is the running SERVICES not the running APPS. For the apps you can set them to Inactive at the "Inactive apps" (the bottom of developer options), though this is NOT the same as stopping them.
    – Eske Rahn
    Commented Aug 6, 2016 at 9:55
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Thanks eldarerathis

This is strictly running services and not apps.

...To actually find and stop running apps you can go to Settings, Memory, "Memory used by apps" (ADD: Strictly apps that have been running within the last 3 hours, and ONLY those using more than a minimum limit of RAM)

When you click one, the vertical ellipsis top right gives you easy access to actually STOP the app.

Note also that parallel to the "Running Services" described, there is an "Inactive apps" at the bottom of the developer options. And you should try to inactivate an app instead of actually stopping it. If it is well behaved, this will often be almost as good, and is more clean than giving it the axe with stop.

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  • Good find on the "inactive apps", never noticed it before. It doesn't seem to halt running apps like stopping does, though, which could be good or bad depending on the app in question.
    – Andy Yan
    Commented Aug 12, 2016 at 7:52
  • Well it is not stopping the apps, it is marking it as inactive. If I understand this right, it is part of the doze-system. That is, it requests the OS to not wake the app running in the background while the phone is idle. When the phone is active it does not help. So this is NOT a fix against bloat. On Marshmallow even bloat that are marked DISABLED can still be started! That really sucks!!! So we need to revisit the disabled-apps list from time to time, to see that they are actually stopped!
    – Eske Rahn
    Commented Aug 13, 2016 at 10:48
  • Or use apps/Xposed modules like Greenify or Prevent Running. I don't care about the extras, just don't let'em run. Especially when our Chinese app makers never care about app design disciplines and autostart at every single occasion they can think of.
    – Andy Yan
    Commented Aug 13, 2016 at 10:58
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    I'm not sure I understand the difference. If you stop all running services belonging to an app, you've stopped the app right? Or is it related to stopping other components, i.e. broadcast receivers and content providers.
    – jiggunjer
    Commented Sep 8, 2016 at 2:48
  • Hi jiggunjer. Well I'm by far no expert on Android. But I do see apps that are running (and stoppable) that does not appear on the running services (nor cached processes) lists. We would need someone with more knowledge to teach us the finer details here.. Any takers?
    – Eske Rahn
    Commented Sep 9, 2016 at 12:37

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