Force quitting apps in Android 15 temporarily disables widgets

Android 15 comes with several behavioral changes, one of which is said to be… related to the force-stop functionality. As you may know, when a particular Android app keeps nagging you or behaving strangely, you tend to clear the app from memory by swiping up the app card from the Recent Apps section.

However, another alternative method is to terminate the app completely using the force stop feature. Force quitting an app kills all background activity, but the widgets related to the app remain unaffected and work fine.

Using the force-stop feature in Android 15 will temporarily disable the widgets on the app’s home screen

You might be thinking: what’s wrong with that? Well, there is a possibility that an app is behaving strangely because of the widget itself. And in such cases, terminating an app using force stop method is not effective. Therefore, Android 15 will effectively address this problem. Today Android Police reported of which Google recently updated the behavior changes section in Android 15 its developer website.

The section highlights that when you force quit an app, all related widgets will be temporarily disabled “as the operating system will terminate or cancel the app’s pending intent.” That’s not all: the related widgets are grayed out on the home screen. As a result, the widgets will not restart until you launch the app directly or indirectly.

This change in behavior may not have any direct consequences for you

It’s a major behavior change in Android 15 and will determine how apps will function, even if it doesn’t directly affect you. As we mentioned earlier, the widgets can be one of the reasons for a misbehaving app. Since many Android apps you use do not have widgets on the home screen, you may not encounter this problem.

However, if there is one with widgets, the new changes provide peace of mind. With this change, Google wants to ensure that the force stop feature remains effective for users in Android 15. Therefore, Google wants app developers to use the new ‘ApplicationStartInfo.wasForceStopped()’ method to confirm whether the operating system has stopped the app in the stands to stop.

Not to forget, Android 15 also comes with several other behavioral changes. For example, apps can run the foreground service ‘dataSync’ for up to 6 hours in a 24-hour period. Moreover, the next major Android update will bring security features such as Private Space, Theft Detection Lock and more.