How to stop apps from getting started?

[hman]

Hi, recently I experienced that UpToDown got “mad”. I used that before I installed Yalp, and on some topics I found it more useful than Yalp.
But four days ago it triggered my warning level of data usage though my provider, meaning it peaked 4 GByte. No problem, my plan includes 10. But 4 GByte for what?

Also I found out that it drains my battery really fast (probably because keeping the LTE link in action, stopping it from going into power saving). So I throttled UpToDown, disallowing to downlaod automatically.

But I found out it constantly drew 10% CPU load… I have OS monitor installed, but I could neither give it a nice (priority reduction) nor kill it for long.

No matter whether I force closed it in OS monitor or in Android’s app settings dialog, after an hour or so it kept coming back. At the moment I do not want to disinstall it, I would rather just like to block it.

But Android’s app settings dialog seems to only offer blocking for built-in stock apps, it only gives me deinstallation for UpToDown.

Anyone know a way to temporarily block a user app from getting restarted? Sure there are lots of tools , but most functionality is already covered by OS monitor, so I hesitate to install “yet another app”.

Also I found several other apps keep coming back (and having IP connects into the world…) like Opera, Opera Mini, even Swiftkey wants to “call home”… Citrix Receiver, now called Workspace, does not only, as expected, open a connection to your Citrix server, but also to Amazon (obviously there is something in an elastic comping cloud it wants to talk to . Forever. It keeps that link open…)

I assume weather apps would keep IP connects open, but Accuweather opens a whopping FIVE connects at all times…

So I would love to be able to block (and unblock) apps temporarily to save battery, CPU load and data plan…

Thanks
hman

[TobiasF]

You can actually prevent that an app uses mobile data when it is not actually on your screen: Go to “Settings” - “Data usage” - “Mobile data usage”, there you can view how much mobile data is used by each app. When you tap on an app entry, you have there a switch for " Background data".

If you turn that switch off (left position, grey), the app only connects to the Internet when a) you have a Wi-Fi connection, b) you have that app on your screen.

I recommend to not disable background data for Google Play Services or any app from which you want to be notified while on the go, or your notifications get delayed till you come to a Wi-Fi.

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I do not know of a possibility to prevent apps from starting automatically.

[lklaus]

I’m on LOS, do maybe it doesn’t work for you, but you might have an appops style permission system under something like “trust and security”. That’s a fine grained permission system (maybe also only reachable via an appops app}. There are permissions for “stay awake”, “run in background” and “start at boot”. Also, make sure these apps aren’t exempt from battery optimisation (under settings, battery)