Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Android 17 is expanding limits on how much memory individual apps can use.
- Apps that use too much memory can slow down and eventually be terminated.
- The goal is to keep Android phones feeling fast and responsive.
Google is making Android less tolerant of apps that hog too much memory. In a new blog post, the company says Android 17’s per-app memory limits will expand to more devices over the coming year. The feature started with Pixel phones, but more manufacturers will use it across devices with anywhere from 4GB to over 16GB of RAM.
Google essentially wants to make sure that no single app can use so much memory that it slows down your entire phone. To prevent this from happening, Android will step in when an app exceeds its allotted memory.
First, the system can move some of the app’s data into compressed memory. This helps keep the app running, but it can also make it feel slower because the phone has to spend extra processing power on data processing.
If the app continues using too much memory, Android can even terminate it altogether.
For end users, that could mean fewer instances of a phone becoming sluggish because of one particular app demanding more than its fair share of resources.
Google now wants developers to optimize their apps so they stay within the new limits. If they do, you shouldn’t see any immediate difference. Instead, the changes should help Android remain responsive when you’re switching between apps, gaming, or running demanding AI tasks.
The new implementation could be particularly useful on phones with less RAM, where a memory-hungry app can really slow down the overall performance of the device.
There is a catch, though. Apps that genuinely need a lot of memory could slow down or close if their developers don’t optimize them properly. This is why Google is giving developers new tools to help them identify and fix these problems.
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