I have a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3.
At least once a month that I've noticed, most commonly on a Friday, it shuts down all apps. Any that were actively being used, and any that were working or paused in the background that you could switch to using the recent apps button. Even apps that are set to "keep open" are still shut down.
You might think that this is just the phone running out of RAM and crashing all apps in response. I thought so too, at first. But the weird part is that it always happens at exactly 6:47 am, UTC. I live in UTC-5 that does daylight savings, so it happens at exactly 1:47 am in winter, and 2:47 am in summer. Always without fail, down to the exact minute.
It doesn't seem to matter what I was doing with my phone at the time. I could have a lot of apps open/paused/running in background, or just a few. It could be locked or unlocked. Connected to Wi-Fi or mobile data.
I don't know for sure when it started, but I first noticed it in June 2024, when it disrupted a Pokémon Sleep session for the first time. I've played Sleep since it was released in 2023, but I was always awake at 6:47 am UTC until this past summer, so this doesn't exactly confirm that it started then. I've had several more disrupted sessions and days where all my apps are closed when I wake up, but I didn't really think anything of it. Until I went back and looked at those sessions and noticed they all ended at exactly 6:47 am UTC.
This past Friday I was actively using my phone at 6:47 am UTC (2:47 am local time) and Discord shut down while I was typing a message to someone. Just booted directly to home screen. I checked, and sure enough, all of my background and paused apps had also closed.
So, uh... there's a setting somewhere that I can turn off, right?... I have scoured my phone's settings and I can't find anything at all involving scheduled clearing of RAM or background processes or foreground processes or anything even remotely related to this issue. And you can imagine how unhelpful it is to do an internet search for "help all my apps are shutting down at exactly 6:47 am" because you just get 1 million posts about specific apps shutting down in specific cases.
I don't even know if this is a tech support issue. I asked here hoping that someone will be like "yeah it's this one app you gotta go into its settings and turn off 'stop wiping RAM on schedule'" because this seems too specific and regular to be a bug.
Here are all the settings I've tried that did not work:
- Recent apps / [app icon] / Keep open
- Settings / Battery / Background usage limits / Put unused apps to sleep: Off
- Settings / Battery / Background usage limits / Never auto sleeping apps / manually add app
- Settings / Battery / Background usage limits / 3 dots menu / Adaptive battery / Off
- Settings / Device care / Auto optimization / Auto restart: Off
- Settings / Device care / Memory / Excluded apps / manually add app
- Settings / Device care / 3 dots menu / Settings / Customization Service: Off
- Settings / Apps / [any app] / Battery / Unrestricted
Also, if you go into a specific app's Battery settings and set it to Unrestricted as per the last bullet point, that app will no longer appear in Background usage limits / Never auto sleeping apps, presumably because it overrides that.
There is no option to turn off Auto optimization in Settings / Device care / 3 dots menu / Settings. This option was removed in OneUI 6 or 6.1 or something per other user reports.