[Review] WeeKillBackground Pro - Kill Backgrounded Apps Instantly

[Anthony Bouchard]

Are tons of backgrounded applications annoying you?

If you're a perfectionist that hates when you have several applications running in the background when you put your iPhone or iPod touch to sleep or turn it off, then you will probably like this tweak. It's called WeeKillBackground Pro for NotificationCenter by the same developer that brought us ProTube, Jonas Gessner. It is just what you're looking for if you want a nice and easy way to kill all applications from the background in one tap.

As you can see from the image above, a new Notification Center widget is added to your Notification Center. Normally, it has the text, "Tap to close all Apps" inside of it, but as you will find from the extensive settings, you can actually change that text to anything that you would like it to say. The settings are so extensive, that we're just going to jump right into them. Here is a screenshot of the entire settings panel for WeeKillBackground Pro:



Going in order, you will see the option to exclude apps. If you are wondering what this does, it means that WeeKillBackground Pro will kill all applications running in the background except for the ones that you select. This means that you can close out of the memory-hog applications but continue to let applications that you need run in the background. After that, you see the options for changing around the text that appears in your Notification Center widget. You can change the text color between white and black and the text can read whatever you want it to say by simply typing it into that text box.

After you get past those options, you will find some more appearance options. The first one is that you get to choose one of two built-in background types. The first one (default) is shown in the first image of the review which resembles any iOS widget with its glass-engraved appearance with text in it. The other option lets you do away with the widget template altogether and make it look like the text is a part of Notification Center without being a widget. Tapping it will still yield the same application-ending results. Below that you will see the option to change the background with a picture. You will need to know the image path and you will need to manually specify if it needs to be stretched or not (this is the case with pictures that are not the correct size that you need to re-size to make them work correctly.

Under that you will see a dismiss when pressed option which basically lets you dismiss Notification Center after you have used the kill backgrounded applications command. This can be helpful, although personally, I like to hang out in Notification Center for a while afterwards, so that setting is obviously not for everyone - good thing it's disabled by default!

Under that, you will see two more switches, one that closes every application when you open Notification Center and one that closes every application when you close notification center. These can be particularly helpful; they don't make you tap anything, they automatically close the applications for you. Although if you don't configure them right, you might end up with a frowny face because it could end one of the applications that you have running that is doing something when you inadvertently forget that opening or closing Notification Center will close it on you.

The last option lets you have timed application closing. What this does is it lets you set a timer and every time that the timer runs out, WeeKillBackground Pro will close every application running in the background. This is the perfect setting for any lazy perfectionist that wants their applications ended when they're done using their phone, but doesn't have the patience to close all of the applications out themselves.

WeeKillBackground Pro works with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and requires that you have iOS 5 because you need to have Notification Center to use it. It will set you back 99¢, but I think that the extensive options are completely worth it. The options are already useful, but Jonas says that there is another big update coming up. We will keep you posted on it!

Name: WeeKillBackground Pro for Notification Center
Price: 99¢
Version: 1.0-1
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: Jonas Gessner
Editor's Rating:  4/5

Are you going to use WeeKillBackground Pro to take control of your applications? Share in the comments.

Sources: Jonas Gessner

[2k1]

got this tweak this weekend and love it very easy to kill everything swipe down and click

[R.Mortera]

99 cents for this handy tweak? Will definitely try this out!

[bigbaba]

I heard the iPhones memory management kills background processes for you. Is there a point to this?

[xclusiveiphone]

I heard the iPhones memory management kills background processes for you. Is there a point to this?

The iOS memory management sucks, if you look at the diagnostics it will show a ton of low memory crash.

[mustard05]

I heard the iPhones memory management kills background processes for you. Is there a point to this?

This is true! However, it does take a little bit of time before the os starts totally killing the processes. At least that is how I understood the process.

[DQEight]

Been using the normal version of this for a while now , swipe down in NC to kill All processes or do them individually from the task switcher if there's ones you want to keep running. No real reason to pay for this one unless your lazy.

[Simon]

Nice, been waiting for the pro version. Basic one didnt let you exclude apps from being killed.

[teej1410]

Sounds cool but I never use notification center. In fact I disabled it via Springtomize. But some of the widgets might get me back to using it again.

[Oraclebear]

my phone will actually start crashing randomly. i went in today after about a week and nearly every app i have was running in the phone ... and powering it off and back on does not do anything for that either.

there is also the same app without the PRO ... the only difference appears to be that it is not configurable - and so does not have the automatic mode - which i don't want anyway ... and it is free.

[domenicp]

Does this app run in the background.

[c0dy]

I was going to write another "but you can do this for free with Activator...." rant, but this tweak is much better than that. I don't use NC though, so I won't be buying it

[hotman]

Omni Stat kills all backgroundapps instantly and easyly, and it's free. I want an app that auto activate selected apps (backgrounder not a killer). Is the "exclude apps" option do that things or we have to run them first?

[tunechi]

This is nice!!

[drjailbreakMD]

I installed this and there is nothing on my NC at all tried a reboot a respring and a reinstall and nothing...anyone else have this issue? Any help would be great

[zinjen]

These removebackground are nice and all but the big tweak would be when someone can make all apps close when you reach a certain RAM threshold automatically.

[Anthony Bouchard]

I installed this and there is nothing on my NC at all tried a reboot a respring and a reinstall and nothing...anyone else have this issue? Any help would be great

Try going into your Notification settings and actually dragging the widget into your Notification Center.

[drjailbreakMD]

Try going into your Notification settings and actually dragging the widget into your Notification Center.

Thanks so much it worked!!!

[jenra]

Nice tweak but will love to know what NC theme your using?

[vantheman169]

These removebackground are nice and all but the big tweak would be when someone can make all apps close when you reach a certain RAM threshold automatically.

That would be awesome. There should def be a tweak that just does KILL Processes and FREE MEMORY when set to a desired RAM MB of your choice. Running in the background or a status bar across the top to let you know when it is doing its thing.

I always watch my ram. I have the 4S and often it gets down under a 100 MB. I use RemoveBG with SBSettings. And i can wach the MB in my status bar go from 85 to 290 just by killing those damn apps running. (some say they dont use memory....yeah right) The nice thing about this app tho is you have the option to set how often you want it to kill the apps. Might have to check it out.