Picture this: you're playing your favorite game, watching a movie, or scrolling through your social media feed, and all of a sudden, your phone freezes. You try tapping or swiping the screen, and still nothing. The app just froze out of nowhere.
Now, usually, this isn't a big deal since you can just close the app and restart it. But this doesn't always work. In that case, you might be tempted to go to the app's settings and force stop the app. But should you? Let's find out.
When Is It Okay to Force Stop an App?
When you try to force stop an app, the confirmation prompt usually includes a warning saying, "If you force stop an app, it may misbehave." This is ironic since you force stop an app in the first place because it is misbehaving, and the operating system isn't doing anything about it.
Normally, when everything is working the way it is supposed to, an app will jump from one activity to the next as you use it. And when you're done using it and close it, the operating system removes it from memory because it's no longer needed.
Some apps, like weather or WhatsApp, can stay running in the background and come to the foreground when prompted. But if something goes wrong, the app can lag, freeze, crash mid-use, constantly restart, not open, or any combination of these unpredictable actions.
In such a case, force-stopping a misbehaving app can be handy because it kills all currently running processes of that app. This renders the app unable to access its cache files. Since the app can no longer interact with the resources on your device, it stops reacting.
Will I Lose Data If I Force Stop an App?
Force stopping an app usually solves the problem if the app is misbehaving. But you might want to reconsider before you press that button. If you're doing something important, you will likely lose your unsaved data in the app.
For instance, let's say you’re playing a game and the app starts crashing. You hit the Force Stop button and kill the app. In that case, the game progress you made just before you close the app may be lost because it couldn't be saved to the app directory or cache files.
A good way to avoid this is to simply wait. Oftentimes, excessive RAM usage can make your device freeze—which is likely if you're playing a graphic-intensive game on a mid-range phone. To avoid this, waiting for a few minutes can unfreeze the device without you having to lose your progress.
