Using Smartphones as daily drivers for calls, web browsing, taking pictures, using social media, and keeping in touch with friends and family. With the disparity of battery capacities on Android devices, Apps like “Greenfly” can maximize battery life throughout the day.
Downloading and Accessing Greenify on the Google Play Store
When Greenify was first created, it required users to have root, or full access to their phone. Earlier this year, the creators of Greenify made Greenify’s “Auto Hibernation” features fully accessible to non-rooted phones. Its battery saving benefits can currently be reaped without having root access to your phone. If you don’t already have it, let’s download the app!First click on the “Google Play” store icon of your Android device. Your icon arrangement is obviously going vary a whole lot from mine, so don’t fret if your apps are in a different order than mine.
The Google Play Store appears. Within the Google Play Store, we’re going to select the “Search Button” and type in “Greenify”.
Once we type in Greenifiy under the search option, a few different options should appear. One of them will be the Greenify app that we actually want to click.
Click on the Greenify app highlighted below. The App Screen promptly appears afterward.
Note: There are actually two versions of the Greenify app itself. There is the one on the Google Play Store that is a the Paid donation version, and there is the free Greenify app. The Paid Donation version of the app offers a few additional experimental features, and it offers users that like that app the opportunity to support the App’s originator. For the sake of this tutorial, we are going to cover how to use the free one as non-rooted users. Feel free to download the paid version of the app if you’d like, but you do not need to do so to reap the core and primary benefits of this application. Look to the below picture to see what I am referring to.
Once you have access to the Greenify screen app screen pictured below, click on the “Install” Button to initiate the installation of the app on to your device. An “Install” pop up appears.
On the “Install” pop-up below, click “Accept”. Greenify will install itself and place its icon on an available spot within one of your App Pages. If your app pages are full, the Android OS will create another one to make room for the application. Locate Greenify within your pages and click on it to launch the app.
Caution: If you have root access and the donation version, do your research before hibernating system apps. Shutting down certain system apps may put you at risk of making your phone unstable and disabling apps that you actually want to run in the background. The Power Users amongst you guys have been warned!
Using Greenify without Root Access
Using Greenify without root can bring many battery saving effects. Without further ado, let’s jump in to shutting down some of our apps. The picture below will show how your non-rooted screen will look like. Once you see that screen, click on the Greenify screen.
Once you click the Greenify button, the “App Analyzer” screen appears. The App Analyzer screen allows you to actually select and delegate which apps you want to hibernate or Greenify.
Notice the “Blue Lettered Categories” under some of the Apps? Greenify breaks your system Apps into four categories. These categories include: “Running in Background”, “Scheduled Running”, and “May Slow Down the Device When”. The May Slow down Device When is the third and last category that Greenify divides your Apps into. The below screenshot shows this last category.
Alternatively, if we want access to all of your apps, you can click the option button with the three dots up top to reveal the “Show All” option to reveal more of your applications. Click on the ”box” on the right of the Show All text to “Show All”.
After clicking the Show All app option, you can scroll down to see the rest of your apps. If like many people you have a lot of apps, you may need to click one more arrow at the bottom to see all of your Apps. Click the arrow under the blue lettered “More” category. All of your apps should be revealed.
Greenifying your Apps
In the first section of the article, we discussed how to download Greenify and looked at the categories in which Greenify labels your commonly used apps. Now we’re going to actually try to Hibernate or Greenify some of our apps.Make sure you’re at the App Analyzer screen. The App Analyzer screen looks much like the screen below.
Now we’re going to select apps from each of the three main categories that I mentioned earlier. Each app that you select to Greenify will turn blue when highlighted. Feel free to select any amount of apps that you want.
Note: I wouldn’t recommend picking apps that you commonly use whose functionality relies on regularly phoning home. These apps can include Apps like Google Maps or Weather and conditions apps. Apps like the ones I mentioned work best when they are left alone, and may cause dysfunction or having to manually refresh them. For example, imagine having your weather app lagging days behind unless you manually refresh it. First world problem, I know, but I just thought I would mention this.
After you have picked the apps you want, Go back to the top of the App Analyzer screen and click on the checkmark button.
After clicking the checkmark button, and attempting to Hibernate your first couple of apps, Greenify will present users with note about Greenifying without Root Access. Users can press the OK button on the bottom of that screen to advance to their Greenified Apps.
Below are the Apps that I decided to Greenify. Notice that many of my applications like the Greenify warning specified require “Manual Hibernation”, while many apps hibernate right off the bat.
In order to easily manually Greenify click on the “Option” at the bottom right hand corner. A pop up box with the options: Create hibernation shortcut, Experimental Features, and About appear. Click on the “Create Hibernation Shortcut” to create shortcut we will use to manually put apps to sleep. The Hibernate Now shortcut instantly appears on one of your vacant Android page spot.
For the sake of our example we are going to attempt to manually shut down “Dolphin Browser”. Click on the “Hibernate Now” button.
Since the Dolphin Browser is at the very top of the queue to manually shutdown, it will be the first one that will manually shut down. After clicking the “Hibernate Now” Screen, the App info screen appears. This App info screen will have a statement that informs the user on how to manually hibernate apps. Click the “Force Stop” Button as instructed to Manually Activate apps.
The App that we will attempt to Manually Hibernate will give us lip about pressing “Force Stop”, but press ”OK” anyway.
Pressing “Force Stop” Manually Hibernates our pesky Dolphin Browser. Our once stubborn Dolphin Browser app will finally be hibernated under the Hibernate category below. We can rinse and repeat as necessary for other apps that require Manual Hibernation.
Hibernating Apps the Easy Way with Automated Hibernation
Remember this pesky little screen we saw a while back? For us non-rooted brethren, this screen will now be our friend in enabling us to “Automated Hibernation. Even for the stubborn apps that don’t do so initially.
To enable Automated Hibernation, click on the “Enable Automation Button”. The “Accessibility Screen” appears.
You will see several different panes governing Accessibility options. To change the Accessibility Settings in Greenery, we are going to have click on the Greenery service and click it from “Off” to “On.”
The Greenify Settings screen now appears. We are going to have similarly set this screen from “Off” to On.
The “Stop Greenify?” warning will appear below. We are going to have to shut off Greenify to allow our changes to the Accessibility Settings to take. Press “OK” on that warning box.
Finally users are going to have to have to re-enable Greenify to Finalize and cement the Greenify Accessibility Process. You will see one more final dialog box that you will have to contend with. Press “OK”.
Click on Hibernate Now Button that we have created previously and you will find that your apps will behave quite differently than when we were Manually Hibernating our apps.
That’s it! We now know how to both manually Greenify individual apps as well as setting it to Automate Hibernation for us.
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