How To Restrict Background Data For Individual Apps on Android

We love to put data on our Android phone for browsing anything on the Internet. If you use mobile data on your device, you would often notice that you've low data packet. Apps that are running in the background churns out your mobile data. In this post, you will learn how to restrict background data for individual apps on Android.

For prepaid sim users, they need to put data often. For postpaid users, they need to pay the bill for every cycle. It will be a headache if you lose data frequently without using the apps. You need to control data usage of the apps that are hungry for data.

What is the Background Data?

When you closed an app and still receiving push notifications, it means the app is running in the background. If the notifications are not so useful, there is no value for letting the app to run in the background.

There are many apps which run in the background without projecting any notification and consumes big data. It may download new updates, status, and sync data. You should limit data usage for these kinds of apps.

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Why You Should Restrict Background Data?

The biggest advantage of restricting android background data is that you will save your Money. A lot of people make a budget for smartphone data usage plan. Some people spend more than $20 dollars for data consumption.

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Running many apps in the background not only eats your data but also slowdowns your device. This weakens the stability of the operating system. Due to this, your phone may hang often. Then, you will likely lose interest in using your Android device.

What is the Difference Between Background Data and Foreground Data?

When you are not actively using an app but runs in the background, it is called as background data.

When you are actively using an app that requires an Internet connection, it will surely consume data. It is called foreground data. Example: you ping your friends, post a tweet and status update.

Restrict Background Data: Definition

The name itself implies the simple answer. Stopping apps from running in the background is the correct definition. 

Restricting background data will obviously reduce data usage and saves cost. To restrict background data, you first need to know what apps are using data on Android. Most importantly, you should also need to know what apps are running in the background.

Check What Apps are using Data on Android

Before restricting background data, check what are the apps that consume data on your Android device. Go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Data usage. Check out the apps for how much data volume have been consumed. 

In my case, the Facebook app consumes the highest data for the last 30 days. This shows both the foreground and background data consumption. You could also check the data usage for the past 4 months by tapping the drop-down button.

Restrict Background Data For Individual Apps

The data usage section on Android settings can execute the entire data consumption. If you notice an app that eats a lot of your data, you may want to restrict its background data access. To save your bandwidth and data, you should check out the settings.

Go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Data Usage. Check all apps for high data consumption. Tap on the specific app in the list.

Turn Off Background data.

This will restrict background data for the certain app. You need to Turn Off Background data manually for each app.

Though it requires manual action, it's worth checking out.

Reduce Data Usage on Chrome Browser in Android

An Android phone comes with pre-installed Google chrome browser. Over 60% of users use chrome browser as default. 

Any mobile browser that supports flash would churn out more data.  There is a good news for you if you're a Chrome user. 

Google Chrome has a Data Saver built-in feature. It allows you to save data while browsing. This feature routes all traffic through a proxy run by Google which compresses the data. Finally, you will get the results for your browsing instantly.

Google Chrome's data saver feature can do two things. It can save the data and at the same time, it loads the page faster. So, it's a win-win feature.

To Turn ON Data Saver on your Chrome browser, Tap on 3 vertical dots on the top-right corner of Chrome browser.

Tap on Settings.

Scroll down and look for Data Saver option.

Tap on Data Saver.

From now, you will see compressed page results for each website you visit. 

Once Data Saver is Turned ON, browse some pages and return to the Data saver screen.

Then scroll down to view how much data have been saved.

It will show a list of sites that you've visited and how much data used and saved for each site. 

The Data saver feature will not disturb the user experience since chrome compresses data to a minimal amount. Therefore, this feature won't make the Chrome browser look like a mini-chrome browser. 

When you enable this feature, you may see a message stating, "Chrome is unable to reach Google servers for data compression. Your data savings may be limited."

You could just ignore this message. Chrome will take care of this warning and continue to save your data.

To Sum Up

The innovation of sophisticated smartphones and data-hungry apps make it easier than before to blow your mobile data. Make a plan about data consumption and be aware of apps that eat large data when you're not actively using it. The tips given in this post will be very useful for users who depend on mobile data rather than Wifi. 

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