Auto Memory Manager (Root Required)

[DroidxRage]

Found this app while looking on the market today... it's a free app, and requires root to run.

"** ROOT ACCESS REQUIRED **

Allows users to set the threshold for Android's memory manager for applications.

If you get FC or would like to help with translations please email me on [email protected] DM on madsquirrelapps@twitter

v1.1.1"

Wondering if anyone's used it, your experiences, and also had some questions as there aren't really much explanations other than the market description.

When you open it, it gives you the 6 sliders shown above, that you can adjust from 0 up to 120mb. The slides are for:

1.Foreground Applications
2.Visible Applications
3.Secondary Server
4.Hidden Application
5.Content Provider
6.Empty Application

There are 3 settings, Aggressive, Mild, and Default. Now, when you adjust this from less to more aggressive, the slider values move left to right (higher) seeming to allocate more memory to that type of application/process.

In the list of sliders I gave above, it consistently has #6 as the highest memory unit, and #1 as the least. My question is, it would seem to me that you would want the services toward the top of that list to have the most memory priority. I would think you'd want Foreground applications to have more available memory than hidden applications, or am I just not looking at this right in regards to what that unit is referring to?

Basically, if anyone can shine a little more light on this app, I'm interested in hearing from you.

 

[CatsTide]

looks like a cool app but also an app where i could screw some stuff up since i wouldn't know how to use it...i may download and wait for the smart guys to explain how we should set it up.

 

[DroidxRage]

I'm running it on mild for a little bit to see what, if any, impressions I have.

I'll report back, but agreed I'd really like to know more about this.

 

[Chief Wahoo]

Interesting app - I have been reading (and installed) another memory manager called MinFreeManager which has very similar (like exact) wording, but the user interface is slightly different (and I kinda like this one better).

I agree with you that it would be great to have a little more of a tutorial or help text on how best to set up and configure the app and to determine what aggressive vs mild does and how these settings may affect the performance of the Droid. . .oh well, I will wait and see if someone more technically savvy has some insight into the settings. The concept for these memory manager apps seems solid. I wonder what apparent differences we should see by using them?

 

[kristoff125]

I tried minfreemanager and it alwasy failed when I tried to set it, so I got this, not sure if it makes a difference but maybe it does, no one will know.

 

[JonKyu]

I found another app, i was using minfreemanager but while I was reading the post over at xda another app came up called "autokiller" the name is misleading as it basically does what minfreemanager does.
AndRS Studio
I think I like the UI a bit better and it has more options to choose from!

 

[DroidxRage]

I couldn't make heads or tails of this, or whether it had an effect, so I've uninstalled it, and actually am using another app, MemoryUsagePlus, which i'm finding is a GREAT tool for simply monitoring memory IMO. I don't think it needs root and it has a free and paid version. Worth checking out, I made another thread on it somewhere I could find if you were interested.

 

[JonKyu]

I couldn't make heads or tails of this, or whether it had an effect, so I've uninstalled it, and actually am using another app, MemoryUsagePlus, which i'm finding is a GREAT tool for simply monitoring memory IMO. I don't think it needs root and it has a free and paid version. Worth checking out, I made another thread on it somewhere I could find if you were interested.

Well I just read the XDA thread about it and it made sense lol so I think i'll just keep it lol

 

[DroidxRage]

link please?

 

[tdog7879]

auto killerapp is the same thing and i think it works good but I set miner to the lowest setting as it wil mess with phone while being set at a higher setting

 

[JonKyu]

link please?

How to configure Android's *internal* taskkiller - xda-developers

 

[DroidxRage]

Okay, so I read up a little bit about this app in that thread and the functionality it provides, and can happily report that I understand it better now, and think it's something I will probably replace my taskiller with.

Here's to explain what I learned from that thread in lamen's terms:

Android has a task killing system in place where it groups processes into 1 of 6 types. The type that is assigned depends on how important that process is to what the phone is actively running. Here are the 6 classes Android uses with definitions, which neatly correspond to the sliders in this application:



FOREGROUND_APP: // This is the process running the current foreground app. We'd really rather not kill it! Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.

VISIBLE_APP: // This is a process only hosting activities that are visible to the user, so we'd prefer they don't disappear. Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.

SECONDARY_SERVER: // This is a process holding a secondary server -- killing it will not have much of an impact as far as the user is concerned. Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.

HIDDEN_APP: // This is a process only hosting activities that are not visible, so it can be killed without any disruption. Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.

CONTENT_PROVIDER: // This is a process with a content provider that does not have any clients attached to it. If it did have any clients, its adjustment would be the one for the highest-priority of those processes.

EMPTY_APP: // This is a process without anything currently running in it. Definitely the first to go! Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup. This value is initalized in the constructor, careful when refering to this static variable externally.



So what happens is when the free memory (ie: what your taskiller reports) gets below a certain predetermined value, it starts killing the least important processes off, starting with the bottom of that list. What this application does, is lets you change the predetermined values that Android starts killing off process types.

So for example, if you wanted to make it so whenever it got below 70MB, it would kill off all the empty processes, in the application, you would simply drag the Empty Applications slider to 70MB.

Also, it doesn't change the values permanently, as it requires the values be reset on reboot (not built into the application at this time). But you also don't have to worry about permanent changes to the system if you decided to uninstall or anything.

I will definitely be using this application and playing around with the sliders for a while, but I think I will get rid of taskiller and keep this, along with Memory Usage Plus, another GREAT memory monitoring app I found, because that app reports way more memory statistics than any task killer, and it also allows me to manually end processes if needed.

 

[FlipBack]

Wow thanks a lot for that write up, it explained a lot.

 

[JayCizzo]

So I just installed this yesterday and put it on the aggressive profile. Anyone seen a noticable speed increase or extra battery life? Too early to tell for me.

 

[hookbill]

So I just installed this yesterday and put it on the aggressive profile. Anyone seen a noticable speed increase or extra battery life? Too early to tell for me.

Been running mine on aggressive for like two days now and I see no difference what so ever. I'm still keeping it but I don't know how effective it actually is.