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Watchdog Task Manager Lite

Watchdog Task Manager Lite

1,000,000 - 5,000,000 downloads

  • Usage stats
  • Whitelist
  • Manual task killing
  • Alerts apps that lose control or remain open
  • It does what it says, and pretty well. We didn't find a catch
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Expert's Review

"The smart task manager"

Reviewed by / Jul 05, 2011

Watchdog Task Manager Lite helps you to monitor open apps and processes and easily kill them

Most of the task manager in the market allows you to kill manually or automatically apps with no criteria (just that they're running). Watchdog Task Manager came to end up with blindly task killing. It helps you to monitor your running apps and alerts you when one loses control or keeps running after regular closing. Watchdog Task Manager allows you to kill that single app easily. What's more, if you permit it, it will send a bug report to the app's developer to let him know what's wrong.

Watchdog Task Manager allows you to track stats of apps' performance, launch apps, put it on the whitelist or the blacklist (just available in the paid version). It also gives you some info about %CPU usage of all the running apps.

Watchdog just hides the system app that mustn't be killed because they restart immediately. Most task killers put in the same list system apps that need to be running permanently with user apps that can be killed. Killing all of them just provokes the opposite effect: more resources and battery consumption. Watchdog solves this problem by let them hidden.

This is the free version of Watchdog Task Manager. Upgrade to the paid version ($3.49) if you want to have all the features (including "blacklist") and remove the ads.

Watchdog Task Manager has been developed by Zomut, LLC., an emerging developer with a couple of apps on the market who's trying to put a dent in it.

Sincerely, this is a simple but great task manager, that brings some added-value features: hide system apps from list, whitelist, alerts and stats. High recommendable.

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Developer's original description available here
Stop killing your apps randomly. Start monitoring them with Watchdog.

NOTE: There is an Android issue where Watchdog might crash upon launching after an upgrade. It seems to be related to the upgrade of the app while the old version happens to be executing in the background. It doesn't affect your phone's operation at all. If this happens, re-launch and goto the menu and hit restart for proper monitoring.

Package verification problems: If you installed the Lite version via the Amazon app store, you'll have to upgrade it there(should be available shortly), or uninstall and reinstall the market version. This will solve your problem.

You don't need a task killer. But you do need a way to make sure a background app doesn't lose control and eat up all your CPU. Watchdog monitors your apps and alerts when one loses control, allowing you to kill just that single app. Killing apps blindly can cause them to stop working as designed, and most app developers won't even take a bug report from you if you are using a task killer!

From Android 2.2 on, the kill command works only on background apps, and they will likely restart immediately. Watchdog removes the app immediately from the list, since there isn't feedback about whether it was successful. Having lots of apps running doesn't hurt your phone at all unless they are doing something. In fact, killing an app and having it immediately restart simply consumes your phones resources. If you just leave the apps running, they will start immediately when you want to go back to it.

The paid version has all the features of the lite, removing the ads, while adding a “blacklist” feature. This allows you to pick a single app that is constantly misbehaving and assign a CPU % threshold to it. When that app exceeds the threshold, it will be automatically killed.

So stop blindly killing all your apps; be smart by managing them instead. Good for all versions of Android.

Recently changed in this version

Fixed single alert option.
Fixed translation where Estonian was showing up while phone was set to English.
Collection of fixes for crashes reported by users
Last major update for 1.5 users. The app will remain available, but new UI features will require 1.6 or above.

Lists with Watchdog Task Manager Lite

Some lists where this application appears: Rodrigo Elizeu, Reviewed by Emmanuel Lund, Reviewed by Anna Grace.

Screenshots Watchdog Task Manager Lite
View bigger - Watchdog Task Manager Lite for Android screenshot
View bigger - Watchdog Task Manager Lite for Android screenshot
Comments and ratings for Watchdog Task Manager Lite
  • (70)

    by Rio Brittany on 22/06/2014

    Works well to detect how much CPU apps are using and which apps are misbehaving.

  • (70)

    by pumajong mahus on 21/06/2014

    Nice apps that I was in.

  • (70)

    by Dominique Allen on 20/06/2014

    But how am I suppose to know which app it is referring to if it only says "Android Media Process" when it notifies me? No app name at all...that's unhelpful. Thanks for all the help!! *sarcasm*

  • (70)

    by Nick Baker on 19/06/2014

    Seems to work well.

  • (70)

    by Ahmed Ghamdi on 18/06/2014

    Did nothing

  • (70)

    by Nishant Ramkhelawon on 18/06/2014

    Alright app

  • (70)

    by Omar DmX on 17/06/2014

    It helps a lot and never let me down.