Apps automatically start at bootup Up until recently whenever I started Android up on my phone, no apps were started with it. Now, since an update I assume, whenever I turn my phone back on, any apps that were on when I turned it off get automatically restarted.  This drives me crazy. Is there some setting to turn this off? This is on a Moto G Power phone Android 10, patched Sept. 1.  I have gone through all the settings I can find with no luck.
People are still misunderstood about the notion of Recent apps functionality. It has always been the same! This is very similar to an OCD of pressing F5 on a Windows based system to boost up the system.
Recent apps is more of a utility feature in android and not a task killer. There is however no relation to the apps actually running in the background.
When you reboot your phone the RAM does start with a clean slate and this is no different for Android L release too. Some apps will always start after a boot and that is how it works. The system makes some apps ready for use in that way.
Recent apps is just a list of apps that you have recently used and not those which are necessarily sucking up on your RAM. For a real RAM usage, look up the list of running applications and not recent apps. No new way of handling RAM has been introduced in Android L as well and it is just an idea of keeping the list of recent apps persistent now. For an analogy think of recent apps like a web browser history and not the open tabs that you can switch to anytime. Apps are loaded/stored into the RAM as and when needed.
On the contrary a better notion would be to use RAM to its optimum use. Linux based systems are designed to work that way. Say you have 100 of the apps installed but use 6-10 apps very frequently and on daily basis. Eventually these apps are automatically managed and stored by RAM for quick access and loading. Loading an app when RAM is in clean state consumes more battery and resources than rather loading it from cached state. The more you use the system the better it gets.
Android manages the memory itself pretty well. The least you can do is close some of the apps yourself when not needed. We need to stop worrying about the number of applications running in background and just let Android be Android.
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