Background processing refers to tasks and their execution when they are not visible on the screen of your smartphone at that particular time, hence the term background. In slightly technical terms, it is the execution of tasks in different threads than the main thread. The main thread (UI Thread) has views where users can interact with the app.
Typically, phones end these background processes for varied reasons, including saving the phone’s battery life as many apps running at the same time use more energy, while another reason is to make your phone run faster, limiting the number of apps stored in the RAM (by killing background processes) at one particular time is an effective way of ensuring this.
A report from XDA Developers mentions how the Android 12 update has introduced an aggressive process killer, much more aggressive than on previous versions of Android, that is bound to cause frustrations on power users who push their Android devices to the limits.
Termux, a Linux terminal emulator that you can install on Android, has been used by the publication to illustrate how the new background process killer is much more aggressive. Termux’s package management system works similarly to the more familiar Debian’s Advanced Package Tool (APT) where you can search, install and uninstall apps with the command apt.
People normally use Termux to turn older smartphones into mini servers, or to run programs that are not necessarily aimed at smartphone devices, like youtube-dl, a handy tool that lets you download high-quality videos not only from YouTube as the name suggests but also a wide range of other websites including some that hide their content behind a paywall.
Android 12 has introduced a mechanism that monitors forked child processes started by apps and kills them if they consume too much processing power if the app is in the background. This mechanism also limits the number of child processes that parent processes can spawn to 32, which in turn directly limits the number of operations an app can complete in the background.
Power users will further get disappointed to learn that the 32 child processes limit is across the entire system, and not just per app, which means that other apps with their own child processes will also contribute to the limit.
As already mentioned earlier, killing background processes is not a new concept and exists across all operating systems from Android to Linux. Phone manufacturers, including Samsung and Xiaomi, also introduce their own background killing processes when they tweak Android, some of which can be more aggressive than others.
Android 12 seems to have become too aggressive with this, directly hurting power users. Now, admittedly power users form a tiny percentage of Android users, and an overwhelming majority will not notice anything wrong but will notice their phones are snappy and feel responsive.
It is a delicate balancing trick, but the obvious choice is if you are reliant on power-hungry apps like Termux that need intensive background processes, it is better to stay on Android 11 for the time being until a fix is provided, or further information is provided.
