Embodiments of the invention provide an application running state control method and a mobile terminal. The method comprises the steps of receiving a first application switching request, wherein the first application switching request carries an instruction for switching a first target application to a background for continuous running and switching a second target application to a foreground; andin response to the first application switching request, switching the first target application to the background and keeping running, and switching the second target application to the foreground forrunning, wherein a stack where the first target application is located is a target stack, and a stack where the second target application is located is a foreground stack. In a stack-based application management mode, the application is controlled to continuously run in the background, so that when the application is a background application, the application also can keep running; a user can operate other applications in the foreground in the process that one application keeps running, so that the time utilization rate of the user is increased and the user experience is improved; and in addition, the size of a display interface of the currently operated application can be ensured to be unchanged, so that the user operation experience is improved.