While a sufficient amount of RAM has always been a crucial specification for Android phones, it’s more important than ever in 2026.
Not only is the hardware more expensive than ever, but AI processes are causing performance bottlenecks.
Modern smartphones can barely keep up with the demands of software, but it’s not all bad news.
It’s easy to eliminate background processes and free up gigabytes of RAM without impacting your phone’s performance.
But what about when that doesn’t go far enough? Sometimes a single app is causing problems, and you need to identify which one it is.
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Before I check memory usage, I do this step first
Apps use RAM in various ways
Apps can use your phone’s memory in three ways.
The first is when you use the app. Open an app, and it loads data into RAM. The more demanding the app, the more RAM it uses.
The second is essential background activity. Apps can use memory when they’re not open for a variety of reasons.
A simple example of this is the timer on the Google Pixel Clock app. Even when the app isn’t open, it sends data to the notification shade, the At a Glance toolbar, and the lock screen.
The third is cached background processes. These are non-essential actions that can consume gigabytes of memory without any major benefit.
I recommend disabling these background processes before checking app memory usage statistics.
These background processes can skew the data and make you think an app is actively using more memory than it is.
After I check that cached background processes aren’t running, I can identify problematic apps.
Powerful memory usage statistics reveal the truth
Eliminate the guesswork from identifying problematic apps
Detailed memory statistics are hidden in your phone’s developer options. Here’s how to find them:
Open the Settings app.
Scroll down and tap About Phone.
Scroll down and tap Build number seven times until you see the pop-up message.
Developer options are found in the System sub-menu of the Settings app. In the developer options menu, scroll down on this page and tap Memory.
You can also search for this setting to find it more quickly.
After toggling this setting on, restart your device.
Memory Usage Profiling uses your phone’s memory to run in the background.
While it shouldn’t noticeably impact your phone’s performance, disable the feature after using it to avoid potential performance drops.
After enabling this feature, use your phone as normal. It can track up to 24 hours of activity, so leave it for at least this long to get an accurate picture of each app’s memory usage.
Quickly identify which apps are using the most memory
To get an accurate picture of which apps use the most memory, select the 1 day option from the drop-down menu. This will give you a broad overview of which apps use the most memory during regular use.
You’ll immediately notice a pattern here. System and utility apps tend to take up the most memory. Android OS uses the most, and look who else is at the top of the list: our old friend, AI Core.
While toggling this setting on and off to take screenshots for this article, Pixel Screenshots was studiously saving these images to its archive.
I had re-enabled AI Core to test AI features, but the huge amount of memory it uses for Pixel Screenshots shows how important it is to disable this utility to save gigabytes of storage and hundreds of megabytes of memory.
If you think a single app is slowing down your phone, switch to the 3 hours option and use the app as normal.
In my testing, I found that this feature was incredibly slow to update. After testing an app, you may need to wait several minutes to see the relevant statistics.
Tap an app, and you’ll see detailed memory usage statistics. It’s a handy way to identify why an app is using so much memory.
One particularly useful statistic is Maximum usage. If you notice sudden performance drops while using an app, it may be due to memory usage spiking.
Another handy statistic is the Average used percentage on the Memory use toggle menu. Even if an app uses large amounts of memory, if the average memory usage is low, you may not need to worry about it.
Identifying troublesome apps is only half the battle
Memory Usage Profiling is a diagnostic tool. It cannot reduce memory usage. The best way to free up your phone’s RAM is by stopping cached background processes, as I explained earlier in this article.
You cannot reduce the amount of RAM an app uses beyond stopping its background processes.
Switching to a lightweight alternative is a good solution, but if your phone’s memory is insufficient, it may be time for an upgrade that’ll last you years.