Don't keep activities option not working

Question

Hi I have enabled Don't Keep Activities option under Developer Settings. But it does not seem to be working.

For example

Lets say I have an App which launches a browser via intent. By theory since the user have left my app it should kill it right ? But it does not. On pressing back button it takes me to my App. Please let me know if I have understood this option correctly. If I did, would like to know why it is not working

Answer 1

Here's how to take advantage of it all:

Don't keep activities -> turn on
Background process limit -> No background processes

Answer 2

When you use an intent on other activity, the previous one isnt destroyed. Tne method onStop() is called when you use an intent. You can read about the activity lifecycle and the methods, that are called due to different situations. So, your activity is stopped but not destroyed! Also, the **dont keep activities option** is used for different debugging things. It slows your phone very much. You phone must close the app and then open it again, what is taking a lot of memory and battery usage.

Answer 3

Using this option is equivalent to using a task killer. Task killers are worse than useless on Android. If you use a task killer, you’re just slowing down your system by throwing out cached data and forcing Android to load apps from system storage whenever you open them again.

It will re-generate activity, So more process than usual.

Source - https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Dont-keep-activities-option-under-Developer-Settings-really-effective-in-saving-battery

Answer 4

Killing an Activity does not mean Closing the app. It just destroys the activity and frees the device resources. When you press back button, the previous activity is recreated again as if it were opened first time.