Watchdog Task Manager Lite
NOTE: There is an Android issue where Watchdog might crash upon launching after an upgrade. It seems to be related to the upgrade of the app while the old version happens to be executing in the background. It doesn't affect your phone's operation at all. If this happens, re-launch and goto the menu and hit restart for proper monitoring.
Package verification problems: If you installed the Lite version via the Amazon app store, you'll have to upgrade it there(should be available shortly), or uninstall and reinstall the market version. This will solve your problem.
You don't need a task killer. But you do need a way to make sure a background app doesn't lose control and eat up all your CPU. Watchdog monitors your apps and alerts when one loses control, allowing you to kill just that single app. Killing apps blindly can cause them to stop working as designed, and most app developers won't even take a bug report from you if you are using a task killer!
From Android 2.2 on, the kill command works only on background apps, and they will likely restart immediately. Watchdog removes the app immediately from the list, since there isn't feedback about whether it was successful. Having lots of apps running doesn't hurt your phone at all unless they are doing something. In fact, killing an app and having it immediately restart simply consumes your phones resources. If you just leave the apps running, they will start immediately when you want to go back to it.
The paid version has all the features of the lite, removing the ads, while adding a “blacklist” feature. This allows you to pick a single app that is constantly misbehaving and assign a CPU % threshold to it. When that app exceeds the threshold, it will be automatically killed.
So stop blindly killing all your apps; be smart by managing them instead. Good for all versions of Android.
Category : Tools
Reviews (13)
Have been using free version of this app for several months now and so far so good. Whether some process or app causes spikes, Watchdog always notifies about it which allows me to suspend the app/process in question from wasting system resources and maintain optimal performance of my device.
Used on an Incredible 2 phone and Galaxy Tab 7 Plus. Works great on both. As soon as an app goes over threshold it will alert you so you can kill it before you're Barry drains. Mine does not go off very often but this is a helpful little app.
It's great to know when an app is eating power behind the scenes. Helpful for killing apps that I am sometimes unable to close. Good job. There are some things you just can't kill and I imagine I understand why but it would be great if there was a tip or something for when an app is eating too much power but I have no options.
This looks like useful app that I need however it won't list running apps on my Galaxy S5 running Cyanogenmod. I also can't seem to access the preferences on my GS5, on my Note 2 I can use the menu button, this means that I'm unable to set the app up properly. I'm not sure why this is but its disappointing, I hope this will be investigated.
After using this apps...my s2 no longer facing freezing or hanging issues. Because i managed to kill any apps b4 it stArted to burden my phone processor and eat up excessive ram...hope tat tis app can kill the apps automatically if it senses any unusuall activity
Went pro to get the Blacklist feature, cos I got tired of seeing the same old apps chucking a wobbly on cpu usage. Now that I know their habits, I leave it up to Watchdog to kill/restart the problem apps whenever they go nuts. neat. The FAQ on web page provides good info too. Note2 and s3.
There is depth to this app that the regular user probably will never even look into, and that's just fine because we don't need to. Periodic cleansing of "misbehaving" apps is simple, however it would be even handier if you could set an interval for that to occur automatically.
UPDATE 11MAY18 - Just uninstalled: After 7 days of use the only app it showed as being used was...itself. Seriously, I haven't used a single other app in a week? Worthless!!! So far doesn't seem to work...no matter what apps i open the only thing listed under CPU is the watchdog app itself and the widget only ever displays 1 app. I would think there are dozens of processes running all the time because when you go into the settings--app manager...there are literally of dozens of active processes listed! Will check again later to see if anythign changes but seems completely worthless!!
The end user agreement was absolutely awesome until i read the final 4 points, number 9 through 12, essentially nullifying any and all (8) of the awesome points that came before them... All of them which seemed to be in favor of the user, (me/you). As if they were childishly keeping their fingers crossed whilst making all prior promises... Please read carefully for yourself to fully understand what I mean.
It definitely helps your battery last longer by alerting you when an app takes up too much CPU power. It also let's you kill any single app instead of all of them at once. However lately, Watchdog itself has been taking up a lot of CPU power, almost 40%... which it never did before, it used to run around 7%. That's the only downside to this app.
Well after having installed virtually every app management application, I read up on weather or not they are a beneficial addition to use. And the answer is NO they are not, however this little beauty comes highly recommend by myself and others who know the truth, so to speak.Superb app manager,easy to use with virtually no congratulation on your behalf.My Phone is running beautifully, thank you lads, job well done to say the least.
You can use this app to figure out which apps are hogging system resources and slowing down the entire tablet instead of trying to constantly clear all apps from your RAM (which is there to open up more quickly the next time you open it btw) and speed everything up! Using on an ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 and it has GREATLY sped up my tablet!
My only gripe is that the settings menu disappears as soon as it pops up. When you tap on the 3 dots, the settings come up from the bottom of the screen, but disappears before you can select anything. It doesn't matter if you double tap, or press and hold; there's no way to get the menu to stay. I'm not sure if this was on purpose.