New to Android - How do you close a program?

[Murf]

How do you close an app? (Like clicking the X in Windows.) I notice when I run an app and press the back button and they seem to go away. But I hit something (don't remember what) and it shows all the apps I started like they are still running in background. So when I'm done with an app, how to I shut it down completely?

Thanks

 

[XXchocolatetouchXX]

download an app killer. Advanced task killer free (or pro) works nice. Or go into your settings, manage applications, find the app, and click force close. But a app killer is much easier

 

[pbrauer]

one thing to keep in mind however that Android handles memory and running apps differently than perhaps you may be used to. It actively manages your memory resources, and will kill apps that are being used if the system needs more resources. This is much better in later versions of Android (2.2 and greater), so there is a pretty big school of thought that you don't need app killers anymore.

 

[Murf]

Thanks guys for explaining it to me. Now how do I "Thank" you? I cannot seem to find anywhere to click!

 

[pbrauer]

you should see a little thanks button in the lower let corner of the post....if you are coming in from the web client

 

[pjfarr]

This is something that drove me nuts for the first few weeks of using Android (on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10). I had no experience with Android or tablets at the time and found it very counter-intuitive (in comparison to Windows). The lack of a close button seemed an idiotic UI design. I resigned myself to just hitting "Back" until all open windows were gone, like many others were doing.

Here's the obscure, undocumented answer I finally found via a very determined Google search: Press and HOLD the "HOME" button and a Task Manager window will pop up with two tabs: Active Applications and RAM Manager. "Active Applications" is usually the default tab, but if not just tap the heading to get there and you'll see thumbnails of all currently open apps/windows. Tapping a thumbnail will switch that app/window to the forefront. Tapping the "X" in the upper right of the thumbnail will close the window, even if it's not the frontmost window. You can also close all open apps/windows at once using the "END ALL" button in the bottom right. To clear the RAM, switch to the "RAM Manager" tab and click the button.

Amazing that there is no documentation for this in the manual or many of the online resources seeing as how so many people are complaining about it. So glad I found this and wanted to share it.

 

[J515OP]

pjfarr good job at tracking it down. There is a reason that this is not upfront information though. As pbrauer indicated Android works different than Windows and traditional computer operating systems. Rather than being concerned about closing every app that is open you should let Android do its thing. It will manage open apps and resources and close them as necessary. You should not have to do anything manually. If you want to that is fine, but you are getting beyond a basic user at that point and should know what you are doing, why you are doing it and possibly think about a task killer app or app manager which can be set to account for various scenarios if you really feel you need to try and go outside the scope of the built in Android manager.

Unless you are a power user with specific requirements, keep it simple and let Android 2.2 or higher manage the resources.

Pressing the back button to exit an app and return to the home screen will typically close the app.

Pressing the home button will typically suspend the app and/or allow it to run in the background until Android determines the app needs to be closed to free up resources.

Some apps have an exit button on the screen (such as the main menu of some games). Using this generally will close the app but it is up to the developer.

Some apps will have an exit button in the menu pulled up by the Android menu button. Again this will generally close the app but it is up to the developer.
Long pressing the home button may have different actions depending on the version of Android and the action assigned to the long press of home. In Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) for example a long press of the home button brings up recent apps. These are not necessarily running apps, just the apps most recently launched. More than likely this is where you saw apps you thought were running in the back ground but were probably closed if you used the back button to exit them.

To see running apps you can also go to Settings>Application settings>Running services.