We've all heard it: "have you tried turning it off and back on again?" It'due south the first step when troubleshooting whatsoever tech problem—it even makes your phone perform better when nothing is wrong. But why?

It'due south All Near the RAM

When it comes to solving operation issues (or simply making your phone feel faster), it really boils down to one thing: RAM usage. With most modern operating systems, as you lot use apps, they fill up the RAM. The more apps yous open, the more they utilize upwards RAM. It's just how it works.

Just as you close apps—or they're manually removed from retention—they're notcompletely closed out. In fact, remnants of apps stick around, keeping RAM needlessly full, leaving less and less room for new apps. At present, the OS will still movement things around to make room for new apps to be loaded into RAM, simply that's where things may start to slow downwardly a little bit—not only does it have to load the app, but things have to exist shuffled around in RAM to make room for the new applications to load.

RELATED: Why Android Phones Slow Down Over Fourth dimension, and How to Speed Them Upwards

Yous may have heard the phrase "free RAM is wasted RAM" before, and for the most part, it's true. All Unix-based operating systems—similar Android, for instance, are pretty much fine with total RAM. Windows on the desktop works better when there'due south a bit of RAM free, but yous really don't take to worry near it. RAM tin basically stay full all the fourth dimension without a lot of issues.

Where you first to run into slowdowns, however, is with RAM "organization." Equally things are moved in and out of RAM, they get sort of scattered—pieces of code from the aforementioned software can be found all throughout RAM. The expert news is that RAM read/write speeds are insanely fast, and so the search and drove doesn't take long.

Cool, So How Does Restarting Assistance?

A look at Android'southward memory direction screen.

Information technology's actually actually simple: when yous restart your phone, everything that's in RAM is cleared out. All the fragments of previously running apps are purged, and all currently open up apps are killed. When the telephone reboots, RAM is basically "cleaned," so you lot're starting with a fresh slate.

And with that, things are snappier. Apps load and launch quicker. Yous tin switch between running apps quicker. And it will stay this for a while—days, maybe even weeks. I don't know anyone who restarts their phonethat oft, and then it's not something thathas to be done. Some operating systems are better at managing memory than others, so that's just something to note. Y'all won't always notice amassive functioning improvement once yous restart.

Only this doesn't only boost Os performance—it too fixes common app problems for the same reasons. And so, if yous're having bug with i specific app, and you lot close/reopen it without fixing the trouble, a restart may exist the solution.

Why? Because even when yous swipe an app abroad, parts of it are still left in RAM. Restarting purges those parts, so it starts clean the adjacent time. This won't e'er fix the issue, but sometimes it will. And information technology'southward always worth a shot.

Of course, restarting isn't a fix-all solution. If a problem persists after a reboot, there's clearly a bigger issue at hand that will warrant further research. Similarly, if you lot find yourself having to restart your phone oftentimes—say, daily—in order for it to stay usable, yous likely have a bigger trouble to work out.