I’ve been using my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra for quite a while now. And while I know that any phone can start showing its age after months or years of use, that’s not something I’m willing to accept as inevitable — especially from a device I plan to keep for the long haul. I’ve never been the kind of person who upgrades phones at the first sign of trouble. Instead, I usually dig around for a fix, and more often than not, there is one. That approach has served me well over the years.

For quite a while now, my Galaxy S24 Ultra started feeling unusually sluggish. Apps were taking longer to open, animations weren’t as smooth, and the overall experience was becoming a little frustrating. I knew something wasn’t quite right. After poking around in the settings, I discovered the culprit: too many apps running in the background, eating up resources. Thankfully, a single setting made a perceptible difference. If your Galaxy phone has been acting the same way, this quick fix might help you, too.

Some apps really need a long nap

Time to hand them a pillow and send them to sleep

Credit: Shimul Sood / MakeUseOf

The first thing I knew I didn’t want to do was force-close apps after every use. I actually like picking up right where I left off, whether it’s a shopping app, a note-taking app, or something else. The real problem wasn’t the apps I used regularly. It was the dozens of apps sitting on my phone that I barely touched. And when I say barely, I mean apps I hadn’t opened in a month or two. I still needed them installed, but they didn’t need to run in the background all the time.

That’s when I turned to Samsung’s Deep Sleeping Apps feature. By moving those unused apps into Deep Sleep, I freed up some RAM, reduced background activity, and even helped battery life a bit. More importantly, it stopped those apps from consuming resources when they weren’t doing anything useful. If you’d like to try this on your Samsung phone, here’s how:

1. Open the Settings app and tap Battery.
2. Scroll down and select Background usage limits.
3. Tap Deep sleeping apps.
4. Hit the “+” icon in the top-right corner.
5. From here, select the apps you rarely or never use and tap Add.

My Galaxy was trying to juggle too many balls

Not every app needed to stay after hours

Credit: Shimul Sood / MakeUseOf

Of course, putting rarely used apps into Deep Sleep only solved part of the problem. The apps I use every day were still doing what apps do best: hanging around in the background.

While digging through the battery usage section in Settings, I got a clearer picture of which apps were using the most resources. That’s when I decided to take things a step further and limit the number of apps that could stay active in the background at once. Here’s what I did:

1. First, I enabled Developer Options on my Galaxy S24 Ultra.
2. Then, I opened Developer Options from the Settings app.
3. Under the Apps section, I tapped Background process limit.

This setting lets you control how many app processes Android can keep running in the background. By reducing that number, you’re essentially telling your phone to spend fewer resources juggling apps you’re not actively using.

The RAM imposter among us

It turned out to be all flex and no muscle

Credit: Shimul Sood / MakeUseOf

The tweaks above helped my Galaxy feel noticeably smoother, but there was one setting I deliberately left alone — RAM Plus. At first glance, RAM Plus sounds like exactly the kind of feature you’d want to enable. More RAM should mean better performance, right? However, instead of adding real memory, RAM Plus borrows a portion of your phone’s internal storage and uses it as virtual RAM. The catch is that storage is significantly slower than actual RAM. So, when your phone starts leaning on that extra virtual memory, the experience can sometimes go in the opposite direction to what you’d expect.

I found that app switching can feel less responsive, that apps are more likely to reload when you return to them, and that overall multitasking doesn’t always feel as fluid. That means your phone may end up working harder rather than smarter.

If your Android phone already has 8GB of RAM or more, you probably don’t need RAM Plus. In my experience, letting the phone rely on its physical RAM produced a more consistent experience than asking it to dip into slower storage. If you’d like to turn it off, head to Settings, then Device Care. In this section, go to Memory, and tap RAM Plus. Then simply disable the toggle.

9/10

Brand

Samsung

SoC

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy

Display

6.8-inch Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X, 120Hz, HDR10+, 2600 nits

RAM

12GB

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a polished iteration that subtly enhances its predecessors’ strong suits. It sports a more industrial, flat design with a titanium frame and a standout 6.8-inch display that’s brighter and glare-reduced, offering a top-notch viewing experience. The camera system, while showing promise, struggles with consistency, but in terms of performance, it’s a powerhouse with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and a solid two-day battery life.

The secret sauce was buried in Settings all along

I’ve always had a habit of tinkering with my gadgets to see if there’s a way to make them work a little better. My phone is no exception. What started as an attempt to figure out why my phone felt slower than usual eventually turned into a series of workarounds that made a major difference. Along the way, I also learned that some features that sound helpful aren’t always worth enabling.

If your Samsung phone has started feeling sluggish, laggy, or just not as snappy as it used to be, I’d suggest giving these tweaks a try. It only takes a few minutes, and you might be surprised by how much faster your phone feels afterward.