How to completely kill UI apps

[girarcat]

Hi! I've noticed that when I close a Modern UI app by dragging it from the top of the screen to the bottom, if I go to the Task Manager, the app is still there, consuming RAM memory (and consuming battery, I guess) and the only way to get rid of it is shooting it down from the Task Manager.
Is there any way to completely stop the UI apps without needing to open the task manager and kill them one by one? Or it is not necessary to completely kill them?

Thanks!

 

[daniielrp]

Drag them to the bottom until they are just at the very bottom edge, then hold them at the bottom for about 3-5 seconds until they flip over. This will close them.

For some reason they added this "feature" in Win 8.1...

 

[jnjroach]

Also, when suspend a Modern UI App, it stays resident in memory for short period but will free up the RAM in a few minutes or if the system needs it (keeping just enough to stay resident - typically 1-10 MB depending on the App). Also anything Apps you give background access to will use additional RAM.

 

[girarcat]

thanks for your answers! I didn't know that feature of W8. I think it's rather useless, i'd prefer all apps to be completely killed just by dragging them to the bottom (without holding them for 3-5s), but it's better than going to the Task Manager indeed.

 

[daniielrp]

thanks for your answers! I didn't know that feature of W8. I think it's rather useless, i'd prefer all apps to be completely killed just by dragging them to the bottom (without holding them for 3-5s), but it's better than going to the Task Manager indeed.

Apps were originally closed just by dragging afaik, but Windows 8.1 changed it so you have to hold them. I suppose it makes sense on some level to leave these things down to the OS, but who knows...

 

[CreativeLemming]

If you have the keyboard attached, press ALT+F4 (more precisely, ALT+FN+F4), it's a lot quicker.

 

[macmee]

This is a problem that boggles my mind as well, and reminds me of the early days with Android.

When I close a metro app I intend for it to be closed. None of this "running in the background" crap even if you say it's simply taking up ram and not taking away any CPU cycles.

It's still running, it's still eventually getting cycles and it's still cluttering my ram.

If anyone knows of a way to make it so when you swipe down a metro app it closes for good (without the 5 second pause) please tell me of it. If I don't find one I'll be inclined to create a utility that does just this.

 

[CreativeLemming]

It's still running, it's still eventually getting cycles and it's still cluttering my ram.

Not strictly true - windows memory management is a complex and clever beast and you should really trust it to do the right thing. Memory allocated to suspended metro apps is reclaimed quite aggressively, and the first to be paged out to backing store if RAM is needed, or ultimately killed if virtual memory is low.

Take a thorough read here before jumping to any conclusions: Reclaiming memory from Metro style apps - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

You really should put your trust in the OS in this case, and not worry about it - are you actually noticing any problem? Messing around with 'application killer' apps is likely to destroy the harmonious balance and result in slower application start up time.

 

[daniielrp]

This is a problem that boggles my mind as well, and reminds me of the early days with Android.

When I close a metro app I intend for it to be closed. None of this "running in the background" crap even if you say it's simply taking up ram and not taking away any CPU cycles.

It's still running, it's still eventually getting cycles and it's still cluttering my ram.

You're right, it is like the early days of Android, when people who didn't really know what they were doing were all like "OMG need a task killer, my RAMS is going duh". It never really occurred that developers are MUCH smarter and know much more about how the OS works than consumers do, so you should just leave the system alone to manage itself.

You have a min of 4GB RAM, no metro UI app is ever going to have an impact on this.

 

[CrippsCorner]

Don't worry, they're adding a X button in the corner to shut Modern UI apps in Windows 8.2/9, just like on the desktop! How forward thinking.

 

[oion]

You're right, it is like the early days of Android, when people who didn't really know what they were doing were all like "OMG need a task killer, my RAMS is going duh". It never really occurred that developers are MUCH smarter and know much more about how the OS works than consumers do, so you should just leave the system alone to manage itself.

You have a min of 4GB RAM, no metro UI app is ever going to have an impact on this.

In a different thread, I noted that after the fast-swipe-down (that doesn't "close" an app), the app was still taking up more RAM than I liked in the Task Manager. I didn't like that at all, but Jeff clarified that after some minutes, the memory usage drops to something minimal; sure enough, after some minutes, the app I was testing did release that RAM. So I don't really care anymore unless I happen to have a huge Office document running at the same time.

Don't worry, they're adding a X button in the corner to shut Modern UI apps in Windows 8.2/9, just like on the desktop! How forward thinking.

Really? That seems to defeat the purpose of max screen real estate in Metro format. It makes a lot more sense to me to add a full "close" button to the charms menu instead, while keeping the swipe-down as "sleep mode."

Also, there's already a registry hack to speed up the swipe-down/flip-over animation times for properly closing an app. I used it on my Surface 2 and it makes the whole process less annoying.

 

[jnjroach]

It is a rumor perpetrated by Paul T. and Mary Jo based on a supposedly leak screen shot from a Russian Hacker showing 8.1 Update 1 or Threshold will allow Modern UI Apps to run in a Window on the Desktop with associated chrome to placate the desktop Windows 7 or nothing crowd. We'll see...MS has a lot invested in making the Modern UI the default.

It is possible that if this is true, it would only be available on the Enterprise SKU.