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[APP] Greenify

Recently I was contacted by njstein about an app called Greenify. He wanted to know what my personal opinion was and if it worked as it claims. I had honestly never heard of it, so I did a little bit of reading on it.
My first thought was was just another app killer claiming to save battery when in-fact it did more harm than good. But as I read, I found that it "claims" to not "kill" apps, rather put them in a hibernating state. I immediately thought of Titanium Back-Up Pro's app freezing feature. It basically allows you to "freeze" an app, preventing it from running in the background. Unfortunately, with TBUP freezing an app, is like uninstalling it. Then, when you need or want to run the app, you have to un-freeze it. With Greenify however, it basically puts the app in a deep sleep state, then when you need/want to use it, you just select it as normal, and it resumes running until you close it. I thought, seeing is believing on this one. It may, or may not, do as it says. So, I took it for a spin today.
Below are some screenshots of when I first installed it, to nearly 13 hours later (check the times in the status bar, not the actually battery time). I used my phone as normal, and began testing. This is my baseline with Greenify installed. I am now uninstalling it, so I can get a baseline without Greenify. Around the same time, I will take another screenshot and about 13 hours later, I will take another. I know, I'm doing this a bit backwards, but that's ok... The ending result will show whether or not this app does what it claims to do.
My variables are:
Device: Skyrocket
ROM: ParanoidAndroid 2.99+ (jellybean)
Kernel: Lightning Zap! (of course)
Usage: Medium (play solitaire and golf solitaire a few times throughout the day, a few phone calls, lots of texting, and some surfing of XDA and the internet)
Apps Frozen:
I stayed away from freezing system apps. Just user apps. I would strongly suggest you take caution when freezing system apps.
DropBox
eBay
Fruit Ninja
Google Play Services (I know this is system apps, but I wanted to test it out too...lol)
myAT&T
PayPal
Rom Manager
ROM Toolbox
Titanium Backup Pro
USAA (banking app)
Initial Results:
I have an average battery drain of about 4.5% an hour
Voice Calls and screen are the biggest battery drainers (as usual)
My games that I play and messaging are not even showing as using any battery.

Awesome! Thanks for testing so rigorously!
Sent from a Dirty Unicorn set aBlaze by Lightning

Initial Conclusion
So, I ran a test without the Greenify app installed. Before uninstalling, I un-hibernated all teh apps I had selected for hibernation, cleared data, uninstalled the app, then manually removed any left over data on sdcard and in /app/data/data. I tried to keep my usage at about the same, but since that proved to be a little difficult, I let it run for a little while longer before coming to my initial conclusion. Here's what I think:
As you can see in the attached images, Greenify seems to acts just like all the other app killers and app managers. I causes more harm than good.
Greenify also claims:
Never should your phone or tablet become slower and battery hungrier after lots of apps installed. With Greenify, your device can run almost as smoothly and lastingly as it did the first day you had it!Featured as Lifehacker's Top 1 Utility in 2013 Best Android Apps (http://goo.gl/1VMwnE), Android Authority's Top 3 Best Root Apps (http://goo.gl/g0L0qZ).
Greenify help you identify and put the misbehaving apps into hibernation when you are not using them, to stop them from lagging your device and leeching the battery, in an unique way! They can do nothing without explicit launch by you or other apps, while still preserving full functionality when running in foreground, similar to iOS apps!
However, as for my phone running "smoothly" as it did the first day I got it, I didn't see ANY difference. Maybe it's the Lightning Zap! kernel that I installed on it minutes after opening the box.
Now my variables only changed in the fact that I only had voice calls totaling for 1 hour as opposed to the 1.25 hours I had with the previous test, and the fact that I let the test run a 15 hours as oppose to 13.
I started with a 97% charge, and after 15 hours, was at a 43% charge. Which mean I used about 54% of my charge during the 15 hours. That's an average of 3.6% battery drain an hour. That's .9% when compared to with Greenify. Not a huge difference, but a difference none-the-less
So, my initial overall synopsis:
Just another app killer. I am not saying this is a bad app. The developers have a really great concept, but it seems to cause more harm than good. I would also like to say, do not judge this app with my results. I only tested it for a day, and I think to get a more thorough and accurate test, you should try the app out for a few days, maybe even a week to let it settle in. I for one, because I think the concept of Greenify is a good one, will be continuing further testing for a more complete and accurate comparison.

Greenify: someone use it on N5? What are the apps it's hibernate?

I personally believe that the main weakness of the Nexus 5 is battery life. After trying for about a week the official app of Qualcomm Snapdragon BatteryGuru (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xiam.snapdragon.app) without becoming satisfied (I have not found significant improvements, may have only a placebo effect), I switched to Greenify (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oasisfeng.greenify) with the Donation Package.
Do some of you use it? Users comments on Play Store seem excited (so I decided to try the paid version).
The paid version also allows you to hibernate the system apps, but I have not enabled this function (and would therefore be excluded almost all Google Apps), according to you should enable this option? Or rather, what are the apps that should hibernate / greenify?

I use it, and I'm pretty satisfied, you can theoretically hibernate all the apps you want, but is not good with apps need too synching like emails, chat, messenger and apps wich you have widgets, otherwise they will not work properly
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

I'm not sure what the point of Greenify is then. If you can't greenify the apps you need, like Gmail, texts, etc., then how is battery life saved?

Han Solo 1 said:
I'm not sure what the point of Greenify is then. If you can't greenify the apps you need, like Gmail, texts, etc., then how is battery life saved?
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geenify all the other crappily written apps that you install. if you greenify apps like gmail, you wont get your email in a timely manor. there are plenty of other apps that start up without you opening them that can be greenified.

simms22 said:
if you greenify apps like gmail, you wont get your email in a timely manor.
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Have you tested that? I haven't but push notifications should wake up Gmail.
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I do NOT reply to support queries over PM. Please keep support queries to the Q&A section, so that others may benefit

stremax said:
I use it, and I'm pretty satisfied, you can theoretically hibernate all the apps you want, but is not good with apps need too synching like emails, chat, messenger and apps wich you have widgets, otherwise they will not work properly
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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I agree that it's not good with apps with widgets on the home screen because the author of Greenify specify it, but I not agree for apps that need synchronization/notifications like emails, chat, messenger because it they use GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) they can be hibernated without lose push notifications!
I doubt only with system apps...

I have greenified quite everything that does not provide notification.

I use it for Facebook and Netflix, that helped my battery tremendously.

I used to use Greenify on my HTC One. I'd hibernate everything that wasn't 'system' and thought it was doing some good. Then I discovered that I was actually getting better battery life WITHOUT using it, so I don't really believe that it does any good.

To reiterate what others have said, I use to Greenify to hibernate any apps that aren't pushing me notifications. I'm honestly not sure if I see a huge difference in battery because it could be a number of things from changing ROMs or updating kernels, etc. But one thing for sure is that I'm actually pretty satisfied with the battery life on my N5. With the N4 I would be lucky to last me to dinner, but now I have plenty of battery to spare by the time I'm passing out in bed.
So I guess Greenify can potentially help battery life, but it's definitely not the answer to a magically longer lasting battery.

maxwarp79 said:
I personally believe that the main weakness of the Nexus 5 is battery life. After trying for about a week the official app of Qualcomm Snapdragon BatteryGuru (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xiam.snapdragon.app) without becoming satisfied (I have not found significant improvements, may have only a placebo effect), I switched to Greenify (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oasisfeng.greenify) with the Donation Package.
Do some of you use it? Users comments on Play Store seem excited (so I decided to try the paid version).
The paid version also allows you to hibernate the system apps, but I have not enabled this function (and would therefore be excluded almost all Google Apps), according to you should enable this option? Or rather, what are the apps that should hibernate / greenify?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Greenify is excellent. But using Greenify without knowing the cause of the problem isn't going to fix anything. Think of it as a bandaid. A bandaid for poorly written (usually intentionally) apps. Facebook comes to mind.
It won't greenify system apps without using Xposed (which doesn't work with ART). These system apps, Gmail, Chrome, Keep (I froze all the other junk Google apps), are actually pretty well behaved these days (they had huge issues in the past).
I think that with KitKat, Greenify has lost some of it's usefulness, with how aggressive KK is in killing off unused apps.
The app you should be downloading is BetterBatteryStats. Upload some logs for us, and most likely we can fix the problem for you. When the cause of the problem is determined, you can then choose the best course of action yourself.
The battery on the N5 is fine. I ran a BBS log while I was sleeping. After 6ish hours, the usage was 0.1% per hour. I would say anywhere between 0.1-0.4 is good. Wifi and mobile network, doesn't matter much if connection is solid.

anyways, greenify is not there to help battery, its there to have more free ram. but it can potentially help battery if you are running apps that open themselves and drain battery, like that aweful facebook app.

Get the most out of your battery when the phone is idle!!

Hi Everyone,
I have been using Atrix 2 for past 2 years and never ever got such battery backup in last two years, so I thought of starting this thread so that others can get better battery life.
I have tried lots of tricks, apps, tweaks for better battery life but the following settings helped me to get more than 30 hours of backup on daily basis.
As I am writing this thread, my phone is on battery since 1 day 14 hours with 4 hours 6 mins screen on time, voice calls 1 hour 49 mins, wifi on 8 hours:laugh:!!!
I have noticed that Google Play services and Play store are the culprits behind the wakelocks that cause battery drain even when your phone is idle! So I decided to freeze them as per my convenience I unfreeze them and its been so easy thanks to Titanium Backups widget.
Just follow the below mentioned steps:
1.You must have a rooted phone.
2.Install Titanium Backup and Greenify (Greenify is used for hibernating the apps which stops them from running in background. Greenify the apps as per your need))
3. Convert Google play services to user app using TB.
4.Place a TB widget (Action widget) and select the action "Freeze/Defrost/Launch an app", select Google play services and you are done. Repeat the same process for Play store.(Note that you will not get any Gmail/FB notifications while freezed).
Now you can use the Google play services/ play store when needed, you have to just tap on the widget to freeze/unfreeze, and take my word you will be more than happy with battery backup you will get after doing these small tricks.
Enjoy!!!

Atrix2dBeast said:
Hi Everyone,
I have been using Atrix 2 for past 2 years and never ever got such battery backup in last two years, so I thought of starting this thread so that others can get better battery life.
I have lots of tricks, apps, tweaks for better battery life but the following settings helped me to get more than 30 hours of backup on daily basis.
As I am writing this thread, my phone is on battery since 1 day 14 hours with 4 hours 6 mins screen on time, voice calls 1 hour 49 mins, wifi on 8 hours:laugh:!!!
I have noticed that Google Play services and Play store are the culprits behind the wakelocks that cause battery drain even when your phone is idle! So I decided to freeze them as per my convenience I unfreeze them and its been so easy thanks to Titanium Backups widget.
Just follow the below mentioned steps:
1.You must have a rooted phone.
2.Install Titanium Backup and Greenify (Greenify is used for hibernating the apps which stops them from running in background. Greenify the apps as per your need))
3. Convert Google play services to user app using TB.
4.Place a TB widget (Action widget) and select the action "Freeze/Defrost/Launch an app", select Google play services and you are done. Repeat the same process for Play store.(Note that you will not get any Gmail/FB notifications while freezed).
Now you can use the Google play services/ play store when needed, you have to just tap on the widget to freeze/unfreeze, and take my word you will be more than happy with battery backup you will get after doing these small tricks.
Enjoy!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you running a custom ROM or stock? Thanks for the tips!

Its stock...JB leak 3!
But I have tried this on Slimkat too.
Sent from my MB865 using XDA Free mobile app

I don't use gapps at all, I have noticed it is draining battery a very long time ago. Actually, any background app which uses the internet connection is a source of a trouble. WhatsApp is also eating battery like a hog. Ideally, there should be no background apps at all, except the system ones.
I use Greenify to freeze WhatsApp. So new messages are coming only when I open WhatsApp, like emails. This gives me extra 2-3 hours of battery time.

timjosten said:
I don't use gapps at all, I have noticed it is draining battery a very long time ago. Actually, any background app which uses the internet connection is a source of a trouble. WhatsApp is also eating battery like a hog. Ideally, there should be no background apps at all, except the system ones.
I use Greenify to freeze WhatsApp. So new messages are coming only when I open WhatsApp, like emails. This gives me extra 2-3 hours of battery time.
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Click to collapse
Have you tried this?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2357417

My week without GAPPS (sort of)

For the last month or so I've been having various problems with my phone and have flashed different versions of Cyanogenmod multiple times. Normally I then immediately login to my Google account, download Titanium Backup, restore all my apps, and go from there. But last week when I restored to CM 11 I decided not to do that right away. I'd noticed that Google Play Services, or Android System were constantly the top users of my battery, and I'd also been getting lots of force closes of system apps. So I figured why not try life without a Google account for just a little bit. My restore actually had one of the minimal GAPPS packages with it, but I haven't signed into Google and have disabled all of the Google packages I could.
I installed both F-Droid and the Amazon App store, and that got me to about 80% of the apps I actually use on a regular basis. I then went on to use my apps to see what if I really missed. The answer to that is, so far, not all the much. I'm using a really minimalist search based launcher, which is great...but I do miss having some information readily available via a widget. Some apps I used weren't available in either Amazon or F-Droid, but I did find an HTML5 app on the Fireplace Market...which seems to be totally fine for my needs.
The biggest surprise has been the battery life. From the time I first got my phone 3 years ago, even when it was running stock with only a few apps, it was a bit of a struggle to get a full days use out of my phone. And the variability was crazy, some days it seemed like I could run through a full battery in about 4 hours, while other times I'd get almost a full 24, both with similar usage patterns. I used battery monitor apps to look into it and sometimes they'd give me some useful information, but a good chunk of the usage always seemed to be core Android functionality. But this week my battery life has been measured in days instead of hours. The first time I went about 72 hours before plugging my phone in, and it was still showing 48% battery remaining. And this was a period where I was using my phone probably more actively than normal, installing and configuring a lot of apps, browsing the web, a couple of hours reading books, etc... I've seen similar life over the last 3 days, but I haven't let it go as long this time before topping off.
So I can't say for certain that this is exclusively due to a lack of GAPPS, I have far fewer apps than I previously did, and any or all of them could have been responsible for excessive usage, and I'm using a minimalist launcher, with no widgets, etc... But still, overall I'm really amazed at the dramatic difference. I didn't even know it was possible to get 4+ days out of a normal smartphone battery, this puts it pretty much on par with my old dumb phones.
So has anyone else run without a Google account for very long and seen similar results, or is this just an anomaly?

Nice to find an ally
I decided running my Moto G (CM12.1) without GAPPS about one week ago using F-Droid and Aptoide as alternative stores and Cal/CardDAV via DAVdroid for syncing. So far I do not miss much. Battery life increased substantially, at least since then!
Did you encounter any issues due to missing Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) or maps API? This was actually my major concern, eventually even decreasing battery life because every app needs to pull the messages on its own. However, this seems not to be the case ...
One tip: If you use the AOSP keyboard and like to swype .. you'll need the libjni_latinimegoogle.so lib in your /system/libs/ folder.

Glad that I'm not totally alone here.
I've been having some problems with the email client pulling in new Exchange messages, it works sometimes, but stops pretty regularly. That might be related to GCM I guess? Exchange services has also started taking up the majority of my battery life. I'm still getting respectable life off a charge, but it's down to about 2 days vs. the 4+ days I was seeing originally. For maps I'm using Here, and haven't noticed any problems in my offline searches. I haven't done any navigation with it yet though. Will need to give that a try soon.
The AOSP keyboard worked fine for me out of the box, including swiping. I'm running CM 11 instead of 12.1 though, so maybe that's the difference?
I also need to look into what's required to setup my own CardDAV server, or maybe OwnCloud? Is DAVDroid just used for syncing, or does it become a new contact app? I'm currently having trouble keeping my personal and work contacts separate, since the personal contacts are stored only on the phone and not associated with an account. Definitely want to find a better way to handle that.
All in all I'm still liking the experience. I haven't missed anything from the Play Store yet. My biggest issues have been because I also switched to the Search Based Launcher, which takes some getting used to. I'd like to find a more "normal" homescreen type launcher so that I can use some widget based apps, but so far haven't found much to my liking on F-Droid. CM's Trebuchet feels severely lacking in customization and ADW is buggy almost to the point of being unusable. The couple of other launchers I've found on F-Droid that are based off of Trebuchet or AOSP won't install on my phone. So still experimenting there.

Uhm, no clue about Exchange messages, sorry. But same here with the e-mail app draining battery (about 30 %). However I'm still experimenting with IMAP IDLE (push) vs. regular polls. Maybe that does the trick ..
DAVdroid is basically a syncing adaptor for the regular contacts and calendar. If you don't wanna set up your own server, you may also use an owncloud provider or an e-mail service providing these features, e.g. posteo.de or openmailbox.org.

When I first set up K-9 for my personal mail my battery use spiked, but it settled down the next day even though I've kept it set to push. I wouldn't mind so much the Exchange Services battery drain if it would reliably fetch my work emails, which is probably 90% of the reason I even have a smartphone in the first place.
My email provider has said that CalDAV/CardDAV is the next feature on their list to build and rollout but no estimate on when to expect it. Do contacts synced via DAVDroid show up as an "account" in Android? Does the contact app recognize that they are separate from other contacts on the phone if you go into contacts to display? For me I only have Exchange listed and if I deselect that then no contacts show in the list.

dmcgregor said:
Do contacts synced via DAVDroid show up as an "account" in Android? Does the contact app recognize that they are separate from other contacts on the phone if you go into contacts to display? For me I only have Exchange listed and if I deselect that then no contacts show in the list.
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Yes, it's exactly like that. Same with my synced posteo contacts.

rzac said:
Yes, it's exactly like that. Same with my synced posteo contacts.
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Great. That's exactly what I want. Thanks!

I lasted a couple of days but nearly every app needs Google Play Services so I got GAPPS back.

Fupri said:
I lasted a couple of days but nearly every app needs Google Play Services so I got GAPPS back.
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Click to collapse
Which ones e.g.? I haven't run into such problems yet. But maybe my app "portfolio" is rather minimal.

Thanks for the experiment documentation. I started running my OPO without Gapps and use Candysix its CM based.
Are you using WhatsApp or Signal Messenger, both are Gapps based, are there any limitations or is it impossible to use em?

Its possible to use WA. The message delivery ist not perfect in standby but if you open the app you'll get your messages. In "chat mode" the messages are sent instantly in both ways.
I wasn't able to test Signal till now, at first i have to compile the source to get the apk.

how about google allo?

Problem with Google Opinion Rewards?

So, ever since getting the Honor 8, I have not gotten any surveys. I found this odd, and looked into the permissions, but apparently it doesn't use any anymore, it uses location history instead. I used to get them reasonably often. Anyways, I went and installed it on my secondary device (linked to the same Google account) and lo and behold, 2 days later I have a survey (based on my location from somewhere I visited the previous day). I went and opened the app on my Honor, and it said no surveys available while my other phone (Blackberry Priv on 5.0.1) had it fine. I took the survey, and the credits are there in my rewards history on both devices.

Make sure it's not being force closed by the battery management app.
Also if you're on nougat, you might want to exempt it from battery optimization.

SolarisSixth said:
Make sure it's not being force closed by the battery management app.
Also if you're on nougat, you might want to exempt it from battery optimization.
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Click to collapse
I'm on Marshmallow and have it protected in the phone manager.