Summary
- Force-stopping apps in Android 15 will temporarily disable all widgets, requiring direct or indirect app relaunch for functionality.
- Widgets of force-stopped apps will be grayed out and unusable until the app is relaunched in Android 15.
- Google advises developers to use the new method to confirm app-stop state in Android 15.
Every once in a while, one of your favorite Android apps might start behaving strangely. In such cases, you can try killing the app from the Recent Apps menu by swiping up on it. If that does not work, you can head over to the App info page to manually kill it, stopping all its background activity. However, the home screen widget of the force-stopped app will remain unaffected and continue working as usual. This could be an issue if the problem was with the widget itself. Android 15 will address the problem by temporarily disabling all widgets of the force-stopped app.
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Google updated the Android 15 behavior changes section of its developer website to note that when an app is force-stopped, all its widgets are temporarily disabled and grayed out as the OS terminates or cancels the app’s pending intents.
You cannot interact with widgets until you re-launch the app. For this, you can open the app directly by tapping its icon or indirectly through the Share menu from within another app.
If a user force-stops an app on a device running Android 15, the system temporarily disables all the app’s widgets. The widgets are grayed out, and the user cannot interact with them. This is because beginning with Android 15, the system cancels all an app’s pending intents when the app is force-stopped.
This is a major behavioral change in how apps will function in Android 15, though it might not directly affect you. However, when you force-stop an app on Android 15, remember to launch it directly or indirectly; otherwise, its home screen widget will not work. You also cannot interact with the widget until then.
If you are a developer, Google wants you to use the new “ApplicationStartInfo.wasForceStopped()” method to confirm if the OS put your app into a stop state.
Android 15 packs several behavioral changes
This is just one of the many behavior changes that Android 15 will include. Another significant change is that all apps targeting Android 15 or higher can run the “dataSync” foreground service for a maximum of 6 hours in a 24-hour window. Google will also limit the foreground services that can launch after a device boots up.
If you are an Android developer, you can read about all the behavior changes in Android 15 and higher over here.
As for user-facing changes, the next major Android release will feature Private Space to keep important apps on your phone hidden from prying eyes, Theft Detection Lock, App archiving to free up space, partial screen recording, and more.
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