Android 11 somewhat limits aggressive ‘appkillers’ from manufacturers

Google plans to give manufacturers less freedom in Android 11 when it comes to cutting background processes. They need to notify users of ‘app restrictions’ in a timely manner, and an API will be released for developers to check why an app has been closed.

The Android Engineering Team tells about this in an ama on Reddit. Manufacturers must notify users ‘in a timely manner’ when an application is being silenced by the system in the background. “This gives users the opportunity to turn down the restrictions,” Google devs also state, but it is not entirely clear whether this option is included in the notification about this, or whether one is deep in the depths of the battery settings must dive for this. Furthermore, manufacturers will no longer be allowed to whitelist apps, often their own, that are excluded from these optimisations.

So for developers, there will be an API with which they can check for what reason their app has been stopped. So here they can see if that was the result of a crash, an action by the user or a choice of the operating system.

When an app is stopped in the background, it can cause several problems. The most prominent of these is that notifications no longer work. Google acknowledges that these steps have not yet fully addressed the problem, but it must progress.

Android 11 beta 2 came out earlier this week. It is available on the Pixel phones. However, the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro also received beta 1 from their manufacturer. Google seems to want to release Android 11 on September 8.