Over the last 10 years, people have grown tired of running out of battery, being glued to a wall outlet, and missing out on important events in their life. Some OEMs are restricting and disabling unused apps and I want to show you how to stop this from happening on the Samsung Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10 Lite ,Galaxy S10+, and Galaxy S10e.
Both Google and select OEMs have taken measures to prevent this from happening as much as possible with its products. The ideal solution is to include a bigger battery but most companies are keen on keeping their smartphones quite thin. So they began to implement fast charging technology.
This has actually helped a lot of people as many can get by with plugging their phone in for 15 minutes to get ~7 hours of usage out of it throughout the night. Google has its own battery saver mode and some manufacturers add in an even more strict version to help prolong the battery even further.
A common practice is for an OEM to create an algorithm that will hunt out and kill apps that are running in the background. In ideal situations, the apps killed aren’t ones you are actively using but there are usually ways to exclude an application. Samsung has gone as far as to completely disable apps that haven’t been used for more than 30 days.
This can be a burden for some people (that I’ll discuss after the step by step tutorial), so if you aren’t a fan of this happening on your Galaxy S10 series then let me show you how to stop it.
Time needed: 3 minutes.
How to Stop the Samsung Galaxy S10 from Disabling Apps Automatically
- Launch the Settings application
- Look for and tap on the Device Care option
- Tap the Battery button in the bottom left corner of the screen
- Then tap on the 3-dot menu icon at the top right corner and tap on the Settings option
- And finally look for and disable the Auto Disable Unused Apps toggle
So just like I showed you yesterday, this feature is hidden away in the Device Care section of the Settings application. I really do enjoy the number of customization options Samsung puts in its smartphones. The downside for the user is that they aren’t familiar with the features that are available.
I enjoy tinkering with smartphones to gaining root access and all, but I think a lot of my tutorials that focus on basic features a smartphone offers is more helpful to the beginner. Whether you’re new to Android or new to the device a tutorial is about, being told about a feature is more than half the battle.
The average user just isn’t going to dig through the Settings app to find every single feature.
Why Did the Samsung Galaxy S10 Disable an Application?
And this feature is why you may find yourself with a disabled application that you know wasn’t done by yourself. Samsung has this feature enabled by default which seems a bit too much. I could see this being enabled in a battery saver style mode but to have it on by default is going to cause confusion.
I’m assuming that Samsung believes the user will not even miss the application if they haven’t used it in 30 days. And that very well may be the case for the average user. However, there are a lot of apps that we enthusiasts use in the Play Store that are a “set and forget” style of service.
Think about automation apps such as Tasker and MacroDroid being disabled out of the blue because you already set up your automated tasks.
I will admit that I’m not 100% versed in how strict Samsung is with this feature by the description seems to say everything I need to know. I even recommend beginners keep this feature on by default and merely know that the feature is available. That way, if an application or game does disappear from the Home Screen or App Drawer then you know what caused it and how to get it back.
Where Did my Application Go on my Galaxy S10?
And this is really why I wanted to write up this tutorial. Granted, I did find it useful to disable it for my own personal usage. But it’s the confusion that can be caused by the end-user that I worry about. I think there are going to be millions of people who unlock their phones one day and find an application or game is missing.
Some could believe that they uninstalled it and simply forgot about it but I could see people getting really paranoid about this. Especially for those people who don’t have very many applications installed. I would guess that this segment of the community is small, but it’s serious when you think your smartphone has malware on it.
Samsung should be more clear about when they actively go in and disable an application (a prompt would be ideal here).
So, I just want you to know that if you have discovered an application or game has been disabled then you can quickly enable it again. You’ll want to follow the instructions detailed in the step by step guide above but if you look under the toggle to disable the feature then you’ll see that you can view your Disabled Apps.
Tapping on this menu option will display a list of all your disabled apps and you can enable the ones you want to continue using right from this area.
