As part of its efforts to help users get the best battery life possible on Android phones, Google has added a new feature to Android 11 that suspends cached apps. The feature exists behind a toggle in Developer options and is reportedly enabled by default on phones running Android 11.
As spotted by Reddit user u/JayYouTea, the feature automatically suspends apps that are in the background. This seems similar to the good old Greenify app that hibernates background apps. While suspended apps could help reduce CPU usage, it will take a hit on the overall multitasking experience.
“Freeze apps when cached and unfreeze them once removed from the cache or killed. Frozen apps will not use any CPU cycles, reducing power consumption for misbehaving processes which might attempt to run while cached,” reads the description of the feature on a commit in Android 11’s source code.
According to the post, the toggle was apparently enabled by default. The Reddit user noticed that apps in the background kept stopping, which in turn made it impossible to seamlessly switch between apps. In fact, the Redditor guides how users can disable this option. The user claims to have noticed better multitasking after disabling it.
If you’re already running Android 11, you can check if the option ‘Suspend execution for cached apps’ is present under Developer options. The toggle seems to be present only on Pixel phones at the moment. Let us know if you’re noticing any difference in performance or battery life after disabling the option in the comments.
