I used to have three cleanup apps on my Android phone. Clean Master (an old habit and since pulled from the Play Store), AVG Cleaner, which a friend recommended, and CCleaner, which I grabbed once when my phone felt slow. I uninstalled all three after spending 20 minutes in Android’s own Developer Options. Everything those apps were pretending to show me, Android already tracks in better detail and without a background process.
Cleanup and RAM booster apps have been around since the early Android days, when phones only came with 512MB of RAM and memory management was still rough. That era ended a while ago, though, but the apps didn’t stop sitting on the Play Store, showing images of brooms sweeping away garbage and still doing nothing useful. Some can even make things worse. Android itself has its own resource monitors built in, and they’re better than these old apps.
My 2-year-old Android phone felt too slow to keep— then I fixed it without upgrading
I saved money by fixing my slow phone.
Why cleanup apps don’t do what you think
Android’s memory manager already handles it
The reason cleanup apps feel satisfying is the same reason closing all your tabs or swiping your apps away in the multitasking screen feels productive. It looks like you did something, even when you’re not. Android has had built-in memory management systems for years, and it doesn’t need a third party to run it.
Called the Low Memory Killer daemon (lmkd), it monitors memory pressure in real time and kills background processes when the system needs resources. It uses a priority score to decide what goes first: background apps you’re not using go before anything you’re actively using. The system already knows what you need better than a cleanup app does.
When a RAM booster runs and frees 400MB, that memory stays empty for about thirty seconds before Android refills it with apps it thinks you’ll need. Unused RAM is wasted RAM on Android — the OS deliberately keeps suspended apps in memory so they launch faster. Killing them means they reload from storage the next time you open them, which is actually slower.
The more aggressive cleanup apps also run their own background process to periodically clear memory. So now you have an app consuming RAM to free RAM. Some reload the very apps they just killed, because Android restarts scheduled background jobs automatically. MUO’s Pankil Shah documented this: apps would restart within seconds of being killed, using more battery because they had to fully reload instead of resuming from a suspended state.
What Android’s built-in monitor shows
Developer Options is worth unlocking
Android’s memory monitor lives inside Developer Options, which is hidden by default. To unlock it, go to Settings > About phone, then tap Build number seven times. On some phones, Build number is under Software information inside About phone. You’ll find Developer Options either at the bottom of Settings or under Settings > System > Advanced.
Inside Developer Options, look for Memory. If it isn’t collecting data yet, toggle Enable memory usage profiling on and restart your phone.
The Memory monitor shows RAM usage over the past three, six, and 24 hours, and it’s a history, not a simple snapshot. Tap Memory usage, sort by max use in the upper right three-dot menu, and then tap into any app for a breakdown of average use, maximum usage, and where memory goes: Native, Kernel, and Caches.
Also in Developer Options: Running Services, which shows every active background component sorted by RAM consumption. If more than two-thirds of your RAM is occupied by services you didn’t start intentionally, that’s where to look.
Battery Usage tells a different story
This one doesn’t even need Developer Options
Settings > Battery > Battery usage shows a ranked list of apps by battery consumed, typically over 24 hours. Quick note the percentages aren’t how much of the total battery each app used. Instead, they represent each app’s share of all the battery consumed. So, if an app shows 15%, it’s really 15% of what the phone used, not 15% of a full charge.
You can tap into any app to see foreground vs background time, too. Any app showing high battery use with minimal screen-on time is running in the background more than it should. On a Pixel phone running Android 12 or newer, foreground and background use is broken out pretty clearly. On OnePlus running OxygenOS, you can see a power consumption ratio alongside the screen-on time, which I found more useful for spotting problem apps.
Once you’ve identified the issue, go to Settings > Apps > [app name] > Battery and set it to either Optimized (the default), Restricted (blocks background activity which could delay notifications), or Unrestricted (no limits). Messaging apps, calendar sync, and anything that needs real-time notifications should stay Optimized or Unrestricted. Apps that keep appearing in the battery stats with near-zero screen time should get Restricted.
What to do when you find a problem app
Force stop, restrict, or uninstall — no booster needed
Your choices are clear when you find an app using more memory or battery than it should.
- Restrict it in Settings > Apps > [app name] > Battery. For RAM, you can Force Stop the app from the Running Services screen, tool. The latter is temporary, so restricting battery use tends to be more durable.
- Uninstall it. If the app has no reason to be on your phone, get rid of it. The most common background RAM hogs are apps you don’t actually use, like shopping apps, social platforms you used for a week, games you haven’t played in months, and the like. They sit there syncing for no reason. Ditch them.
- Just deal with it. Some apps actually need background access to remain functional, like Spotify (to keep the music playing), Gmail (for timely notifications), or similar. You don’t want to restrict everything, it’s more about making the choice consciously instead of having a cleanup app do it for you.
I ditched the cleaning apps and nothing broke
I haven’t reinstalled any of the three cleaning apps since deleting them. Clean Master is gone from the Play Store anyway. AVG Cleaner and CCleaner are still out there, still promising to help, but Android’s been doing the job the whole time. Just like my Mac, my Android now has no weird third-party cleanup apps, and I’m happy for it.
