Background applications

[Charles Wang]

Now that WP finally gaining apps, I was wondering if / when MS would lift the 15-applications restriction. This is becoming limiting, especially with the number of apps requiring it. Perhaps they can restrict it differently by amount of ram or processor speed.

 

[hopmedic]

Yeah, I'd like to see it lifted, as I'm tired of launching an app only to get the message that there are too many background apps. It is still an area to use caution, because misbehaving periodic agents can cause battery and/or data issues, but the vast majority of apps behave well.

 

[Ma Rio]

Can you please make a list of 15+ apps you would use all at once?
I can't imagine myself having more than 5 apps open at any time.
Eg. FB, Twitter, Music Player, Browser...
And I believe it isn't as easy as it seems.

 

[Moiz Mian]

Can you please make a list of 15+ apps you would use all at once?
I can't imagine myself having more than 5 apps open at any time.
Eg. FB, Twitter, Music Player, Browser...
And I believe it isn't as easy as it seems.

I think they are talking about Background Tasks. Almost all apps with a live tile uses a background task. So you can basically only have 15 live tiles at the same time. Which is pretty easy to hit the limit of.

 

[hopmedic]

Being that this isn't Android, you cannot have 15 apps running all at once, as Moiz Mian correctly stated. What is referred to here are periodic agents, commonly referred to as background tasks (as Microsoft so confusingly refers to them in settings) or background agents.

Periodic agents are commonly used to do things like update live tiles, check a server to update live tiles, maybe even pop a toast if some prescribed condition has been met.

Not all toasts or live tile updates require a toast, as some of them are pushed from the push notification service, but those that are pulled by the phone do.

These two links will help you better understand he subject.
http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...naging-background-apps-why-you-dont-need.html
http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...ations-work-why-sometimes-they-might-not.html

 

[Charles Wang]

Currently, I have:

Bing Finance
Bing News
Bing Sport
Bing Weather
Bloomberg
Currency
Facebook
Here Drive
Instagram
Kayak
Nokia Modern Mayor
Twitter
WhatsApp
WpCentral

That's 14/15, because I hate that prompt coming up every time, so I try to keep it at 14. I'd like to also have running as background tasks:

American Airlines
Foursquare
LinkedIn
Nextgen Reader
Path
Toshl
WeChat

Admittedly, some of these could run better for background tasks, for example LinkedIn, but I'd like to have the option.