The present disclosure provides a method and an apparatus for managing an application. Whether an application is allowed to run in the background of a terminal device is determined based on a configuration file. When an application is allowed to run in the background, whether each of specific activities of the application is allowed be performed in the background is further determined based on the configuration file. The configuration file may be generated from a record information file used by the terminal device to keep track of the running data for applications. In particularly, whether an application or an activity of an application is allowed to run in the background of the terminal device may be determined by analyzing the record information file and tracked in the configuration file.