Tasker on low memory devices

[Ritesh Suratwala]

I have GB 2.3.5 phone with 256 MB RAM. Normally free RAM available is around 50 MB.
I use llama for automation. Llama works pretty well with very less RAM consumption. Working great with its ability but has limitations compared to Tasker, say miss call event etc.
Just thinking to switch to Tasker.
But somewhere read it leaks memory a lot.
Does anyone using Tasker on similar config phone. i.e.

Android GB 2.3.5 with 2560 MB RAM (less than 50 MB free RAM).

Can someone share experience in terms of performance and RAM usage?

[Pent]

But somewhere read it leaks memory a lot.

Last couple of releases I've worked on that, think it has improved.

RAM usage also depends a lot on what you use it for. Lot's of scenes
with photos use a lot of memory for instance.

Pent

[Pent]

p.s. try the trial:

http://tasker.dinglisch.net/download.html

Or the beta trial, which is pretty stable and has more memory fixes
(http://tasker.dinglisch.net/beta.html)

Pent

[Ritesh Suratwala]

I guess I'll use it for device automation not for fancy stuffs like scenes photos etc...
Say around 30 profiles like location based triggers, notification triggers etc.
Can I guess RAM need will be less than 20 MB? Else I'm afraid my device may become slower for other routine apps.

[Pent]

I can't say, you'll have to try.

Remember that Android doesn't release RAM immediately in case you want to go back
to the app. When you leave the Tasker UI, it'll show Tasker as using a lot of memory,
but when memory gets short or after 20 minutes or so Android will release a lot of
it.

The UI takes more memory than the actual monitoring service.

Pent

[Ritesh Suratwala]

Thanks for reply.

I would also like to know user experience. Definitely love this app...

[Jenny Hawkins]

A quick check on my Galaxy Nexus showed tasker using about 25MB fresh out of the ui, and about 15MB I've the ui's memory had been reclaimed. I've got about 45 active profiles, several persistent notifications, and no scenes.

[Ritesh Suratwala]

Thanks.

What do you mean by UI memory reclaimed?

I could observe this only by rebooting my phone, where memory consumption reduces drastically. Did you check by rebooting only or any app can do it?

[Pent]

What do you mean by UI memory reclaimed?

See what I said about 'Android doesn't release memory immediately' in my second post.

Pent

[Jenny Hawkins]

Well, I checked by running the Chrome browser, which is a horrid memory hog that causes most everything else to get dumped from memory.  I do get the same value after a reboot. In general, though, you want to leave the memory management to the android system.  It looks like it is wasting memory, as the free memory will usually be quite small, but what it's doing is keeping recent apps in the memory in a cached state. This leaves them available to be switched back to, or the memory quickly released to a new app.  If you've had Tasker's UI open recently, it will still show in memory until something else comes along that needs the memory.  Then, you'll see just the service portion of Tasker using memory.

Unless you are seeing frequent restarts of background services, in general, unused memory is wasted memory on an android system.

[Ritesh Suratwala]

Somehow my concern was correct.

I am finding Tasker is not persistent. It goes often and I can see as restarting in running app.

I set event "phone ringing", and few times found that Tasker was closed by system to reclaim memory for incoming call. May not be 100% Tasker fault but could be custom ROM issue also.

So, what should be path forward?

How can I make Tasker persistent? Any app etc? Or making it system app can help?

[Jay M]

Wouldn't menu/preferences/run in fire ground do that

Jay M

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[Pent]

That's the first thing to check if it's being killed.

Possibly you also have other stuff on the device that killing stuff to reduce memory usage ?

I'm considering a 'mini' version of Tasker for low-resource devices (like smartwatches) BTW.

Pent

[Ritesh Suratwala]

Mini version will be great idea.

Will check run in fire ground soon.

[Ritesh Suratwala]

First of all thanks for great support.

I checked and found Fore ground mode is enabled, still its closing.

Though RAM usage is less than 10 MB, it closes even when incoming call. I don't blame Tasker for that but could be ROM specific issue or minfree/OOM setting issue.

I need further help with following ideas

1. Can we set OOM priority to less than 0 to ensure this Tasker remains open (like home launcher locking in memory)? I can run script whenever Tasker monitor starts that will set OOM less than 0 or say -17. Will it work?
If so, can you suggest script or Task to use?

2. Normally Tasker monitor services are using less than 10 MB but higher when GUI is open. By fixing priority above method will fix only monitor service or total GUI? I guess if it is only monitor service, I don't see any issue with locking RAM for Tasker monitor service. If it locks for GUI RAM, then I have to relook the situation.

Please help me.