If you run out of memory, your phone will slow down, drain its battery faster, and limit how much you can do. By deleting excess and unnecessary data from your cellular phone, you can save a ton of storage on your phone’s memory and make it usable.
Throughout Android’s history, people have tried to solve this with RAM managers (apps that close other apps to free up RAM). Ironically, this will only use more system resources, as applications will be reopened after closing. But now, Android has its own built-in RAM manager that can help free up memory when used properly.
Open Developer Options:
RAM Manager is in Android’s Developer Options menu, which is hidden by default. To unlock it, go to Settings -> About phone and quickly tap “Build number” seven times. If you want more help with this area, check out our full guide below.
Manage your RAM
Now, open the Developer Options menu. For most, it will be listed at the very bottom of the main settings menu. For newer Android versions, you need to go to Settings -> System -> Advanced to find it. Once inside, select “running services” which should be at the top of the list.
Now you will see all active services. Services are components of applications that perform operations in the background (long-term) without a user interface. For example, services handle RCS messages. Usually, these work perfectly without you needing to interact with them or even know of their existence. However, every now and then, you may run into a problem, especially if you have limited RAM.
Find apps using the most memory:
You can check the status of your phone to see how much memory (RAM) is currently being used and which apps are using it the most. Note that RAM needs to be used, so having some unused RAM isn’t a bad thing. Android will try to keep most of your free RAM in use because it is the most useful application.
- Open the Settings app on your device.
- Scroll down and tap “About phone”.
- Tap on “Memory” option. It will show you some basic details about your phone’s memory usage.
- Tap the “Memory used by apps” button. It will show apps that are using more RAM.
Delete old apps:
Deleting unused apps can help increase free space on your Android and free up RAM if apps are running too much in the background. Both free storage and free RAM can help improve the performance of your Android.
- Open the Settings app on your device.
- Select “Applications” or “Application Manager”.
- Scroll through the list of apps to find apps you no longer use.
- Tap the app and tap “Uninstall” to remove it. This will remove the app from your device. If there is no
- “Uninstall” button, the app is bundled with your device and cannot be removed.
Additionally, if an app uses too much RAM, you should uninstall it now until you upgrade your phone or its developer pushes the update to reduce RAM usage. On smartphones with less than 4 GB of RAM, if you want smooth performance, you need to be selective about which apps will be on your phone.