I disagree. Obviously, at least some memory is being taken up when apps are left open. Even if it's just a screenshot of the app being cached, it's still taking up some memory. But the fact of the matter is, it's not just a screenshot of the app being cached. The app actually is opened and is therefore taking up memory of some kind... obviously. I believe the video demonstrates, in theory, that you SHOULD close your apps on your iPhone/iPad: He says the only reason you should close an app is if it crashes. But if the app crashes while it's opened then is that not evidence that the app is opened and running in the background? And if it's running in the background, is it not using memory? If it's using memory does that not potentially impact performance at some level, even if perhaps minuscule? And thus, the more apps you have opened the greater the impact of that potential performance decrease? Okay, perhaps opened apps are in some dedicated memory for background tasks... but in the end it's still sitting in memory and memory has a limit. So I think it's only common sense and reasonable to quit apps from time to time. I don't think one has to be obsessive about it, but being conscious of it is absolutely wise and to one's advantage. I think this video/article telling folks to NOT force close apps because it's a "waste of time" is... unfortunate.
So despite the fact that this is the way iOS is designed, despite what Apple executives state and what is reinforced by Apple documentation you disagree because of what you, personally, believe? THAT is unfortunate.
People who compulsively force close all apps on their iPhone in a futile effort to conserve battery life are wasting their time. AppleInsider explains why you should ditch this pointless habit.
This may be true for well-written apps, but not all apps are well-written - even popular ones.
I seem to recall the Facebook app causing short battery life even when it wasn't "active" a while back.
I agree with some prior comments, what is said in this video is untrue. Many apps run background processes which are killed off if you manually remove them from the active list (although some like Facebook run no matter what you).
It's not hard for Apple to maintain this list across device shut down and properly put launch them into a sleep state when you restart the phone.
I'll add some clarity here.
When you send an app to the background it's given time to finish any remaining tasks. At some point iOS will put that app to sleep (suspended). The system expects those remaining tasks to finish quickly so it can spare your battery.
The thing to note is that iOS developers were granted the ability to WORK while in the background in iOS 4 and expanded through later releases. Meaning, we can ask Apple to periodically "wake us up" so we can perform any necessary tasks that may improve your experience the next time you visit the app. This can range from a wide variety of things (while discouraged, devs can make OpenGL draw calls...). While foreground apps always have precedence, an app woken up in the background can go to town on a wide variety of tasks for a short period of time.
So yes, technically, the apps in your switcher are alive and well these days (popular apps have adopted this background behavior by now). Closing these manually will prevent apps from doing any of that background work since a developer can't tell iOS to launch an app from a clean slate.
For those suffering terrible battery life keep that list clean. For those who look for an optimal app experiences leave 'em be.
I agree with some prior comments, what is said in this video is untrue. Many apps run background processes which are killed off if you manually remove them from the active list (although some like Facebook run no matter what you).
Can you please provide some examples of background processes that apps run? Audio can be one, but that one's pretty obvious. What other processes are my apps running in the background and how long do those processes run? Thanks!
I agree with some prior comments, what is said in this video is untrue. Many apps run background processes which are killed off if you manually remove them from the active list (although some like Facebook run no matter what you).
Once again, it's not an "active list." You have no way of knowing which apps are still using RAM by looking at Fast App Switcher. It's primary function is akin to the Recents option in macOS that lists items in the order they were last used.
You can even test this by shutdown your iPhone and then as soon as you boot it up and log in you can access FAS again to see all these apps listed in the same order they were last used. Now, homelike you that defies facts will then try to claim that the system will then boot these apps in the background. You may even claim that this causes your iPhone boot time to be longer and then recommend that you clear out FAS before turning off your device, but you'd be wrong again. You can also this by loading up a bunch of apps that have long start up times, preferably with launch screens, like games. Then shutdown your device and then when it restarts tap those apps again from FAS to see that they will have the same extended launch times they do when they're not in a sleep state.
Why does every article along these lines oversimplify? If you have set an app to process in the background, especially one that uses location data, then force closing it will improve battery life. This is especially true for map applications.
People who compulsively force close all apps on their iPhone in a futile effort to conserve battery life are wasting their time. AppleInsider explains why you should ditch this pointless habit.
This may be true for well-written apps, but not all apps are well-written - even popular ones.
I seem to recall the Facebook app causing short battery life even when it wasn't "active" a while back.
Any OS should not care how well apps are written, when putting and keeping those apps in background mode.
There appear to be two (ok 3) concerns raised by the "pro-quit" camp. 1. These apps are "doing something" that is taking up CPU cycles and eating into my battery life. 2. These apps are "wasting" memory. (3. They clutter up the list of apps when I go to the app switcher). My understanding is that 1. is possibly true and a good reason to kill certain apps but 2. is a waste of time.
The memory model for iOS is as follows: apps get as much memory as they need/request so long as they are the active (front) app. Background apps can keep their memory until the system needs memory for the front app (or system stuff). When memory is needed, the system sends a message to all apps telling them to free up as much memory as possible. Well-behaved apps will respond to that message by clearing cache memory and otherwise reducing its memory footprint. This happens nearly instantaneously. Either this frees up enough memory to allow the front app to proceed or it doesn't. If it doesn't the system then--in a vary draconian fashion--starts telling background apps to shut down (and they do).
So when you bring a background app to the front, one of three things happen from a memory perspective. In the "best" case, the app never had to give up any memory, so it's ready to go. Alternatively, it's given up some memory so some cached resources have to be restored (from disk or the network). Or, the app had been killed and it needs to boot up from scratch. The user is not told which of these occurs (much might be able to tell based on duration or progress bars). Therefore users had the impression that background apps are always using up memory, when in fact they are only allowed to keep memory if other foreground applications didn't need it. Therefore manually killing background apps just to free up memory is completely pointless. iOS does that automatically.
There appear to be two (ok 3) concerns raised by the "pro-quit" camp. 1. These apps are "doing something" that is taking up CPU cycles and eating into my battery life. 2. These apps are "wasting" memory. (3. They clutter up the list of apps when I go to the app switcher). My understanding is that 1. is possibly true and a good reason to kill certain apps but 2. is a waste of time.
The memory model for iOS is as follows: apps get as much memory as they need/request so long as they are the active (front) app. Background apps can keep their memory until the system needs memory for the front app (or system stuff). When memory is needed, the system sends a message to all apps telling them to free up as much memory as possible. Well-behaved apps will respond to that message by clearing cache memory and otherwise reducing its memory footprint. This happens nearly instantaneously. Either this frees up enough memory to allow the front app to proceed or it doesn't. If it doesn't the system then--in a vary draconian fashion--starts telling background apps to shut down (and they do).
So when you bring a background app to the front, one of three things happen from a memory perspective. In the "best" case, the app never had to give up any memory, so it's ready to go. Alternatively, it's given up some memory so some cached resources have to be restored (from disk or the network). Or, the app had been killed and it needs to boot up from scratch. The user is not told which of these occurs (much might be able to tell based on duration or progress bars). Therefore users had the impression that background apps are always using up memory, when in fact they are only allowed to keep memory if other foreground applications didn't need it. Therefore manually killing background apps just to free up memory is completely pointless. iOS does that automatically.
If #1 is an issue then you should adjust your Settings so the app is doing less background tasks. This is the best way to optimize your battery life. You can even run in Low Power mode to quickly kill push notifications and many other useful, intelligent features that make the iPhone experience excellent.
I think Neil Hughes did a PSA a while back about this and got flamed quite well in the comments.
Anyway, this is all true. They even talked about it during the keynote where iOS 3 (I think) was unveiled.
Force quitting is, generally, a waste of time, effort and battery life.
He got flamed because he was completely wrong! Compulsive closing might not be a good idea but it will resolve issues when one or more apps is draining the battery or causing performance problems. This is so easy to verify that one has to wonder why we even have this discussion anymore.
I think Neil Hughes did a PSA a while back about this and got flamed quite well in the comments.
Anyway, this is all true. They even talked about it during the keynote where iOS 3 (I think) was unveiled.
Force quitting is, generally, a waste of time, effort and battery life.
He got flamed because he was completely wrong! Compulsive closing might not be a good idea but it will resolve issues when one or more apps is draining the battery or causing performance problems. This is so easy to verify that one has to wonder why we even have this discussion anymore.
We have this discussion because there are people who have a negative opinion of iOS because they believe that closing apps manually is a necessary habit required because of poor OS design. If people checked Settings > Battery to see the battery usage data (last 24 hours and last 7 days) they would learn that most of they apps they are killing by routinely killing all background apps have no appreciable power usage. Killing apps "just because" is preventing them from doing things that are more effective and productive (like tuning app permissions and avoiding poorly written power-hog apps).
I think Neil Hughes did a PSA a while back about this and got flamed quite well in the comments.
Anyway, this is all true. They even talked about it during the keynote where iOS 3 (I think) was unveiled.
Force quitting is, generally, a waste of time, effort and battery life.
He got flamed because he was completely wrong! Compulsive closing might not be a good idea but it will resolve issues when one or more apps is draining the battery or causing performance problems. This is so easy to verify that one has to wonder why we even have this discussion anymore.
So I was "completely wrong" when I wrote: "The only time you should force an app to close is if it becomes unresponsive or erratic"? An app draining the battery or causing performance problems is, by definition, erratic behavior.
Re-read the editorial, I never said force closing apps was a bad thing — I said compulsively doing it to save battery life is a bad thing. It's one of our most-read articles of all time, and it continues to be a hot-button issue (hence the debate here in the forums), so we decided to turn it into a video for our audience that prefers that format.
I disagree. Obviously, at least some memory is being taken up when apps are left open. Even if it's just a screenshot of the app being cached, it's still taking up some memory. But the fact of the matter is, it's not just a screenshot of the app being cached. The app actually is opened and is therefore taking up memory of some kind... obviously. I believe the video demonstrates, in theory, that you SHOULD close your apps on your iPhone/iPad: He says the only reason you should close an app is if it crashes. But if the app crashes while it's opened then is that not evidence that the app is opened and running in the background? And if it's running in the background, is it not using memory? If it's using memory does that not potentially impact performance at some level, even if perhaps minuscule? And thus, the more apps you have opened the greater the impact of that potential performance decrease? Okay, perhaps opened apps are in some dedicated memory for background tasks... but in the end it's still sitting in memory and memory has a limit. So I think it's only common sense and reasonable to quit apps from time to time. I don't think one has to be obsessive about it, but being conscious of it is absolutely wise and to one's advantage. I think this video/article telling folks to NOT force close apps because it's a "waste of time" is... unfortunate.
So despite the fact that this is the way iOS is designed, despite what Apple executives state and what is reinforced by Apple documentation you disagree because of what you, personally, believe? THAT is unfortunate.
What is unfortunate is buying Apple line hook, line and sinker. It has been demonstrated again and again that not all appps play by the rules or work in the users best interest. At that point the best thing you can do is to exit those apps to get the system working correctly. This isnt compulsive exiting but rather smart exiting.
Ask yourself this, if you just closed all apps and the system returned to normal operation, is the practice good or bad? Further if you identify an app that consistently causes you problems does it not make sense to compulsively close that app? Unfortunaty to many want to bury their hears in the sand hereand believe one practice is good 100% of the time.
I think Neil Hughes did a PSA a while back about this and got flamed quite well in the comments.
Anyway, this is all true. They even talked about it during the keynote where iOS 3 (I think) was unveiled.
Force quitting is, generally, a waste of time, effort and battery life.
He got flamed because he was completely wrong! Compulsive closing might not be a good idea but it will resolve issues when one or more apps is draining the battery or causing performance problems. This is so easy to verify that one has to wonder why we even have this discussion anymore.
So I was "completely wrong" when I wrote: "The only time you should force an app to close is if it becomes unresponsive or erratic"? An app draining the battery or causing performance problems is, by definition, erratic behavior.
Re-read the editorial, I never said force closing apps was a bad thing — I said compulsively doing it to save battery life is a bad thing. It's one of our most-read articles of all time, and it continues to be a hot-button issue (hence the debate here in the forums), so we decided to turn it into a video for our audience that prefers that format.
Quote: "The truth is, that habit is a waste of time."
I guess this line should really say: "Force quitting apps will generally have little or no effect on battery life, however some apps will drain battery life faster if they are performing certain background processes. Use your own judgment."
There is just no nice way to put this: you don't understand the way the device works.
Actually if you understand how iOS actually works you would understand why killing apps could very well correct performance problems. That isnt to say compulsive killing of apps is desirable in every case but it is completely rational if your machine has performance problems or known bad apps running in background on your machine.
Looking for absolute snswers here is a fools errand. Rather operate your machine with a little intelligence.
I think Neil Hughes did a PSA a while back about this and got flamed quite well in the comments.
Anyway, this is all true. They even talked about it during the keynote where iOS 3 (I think) was unveiled.
Force quitting is, generally, a waste of time, effort and battery life.
He got flamed because he was completely wrong! Compulsive closing might not be a good idea but it will resolve issues when one or more apps is draining the battery or causing performance problems. This is so easy to verify that one has to wonder why we even have this discussion anymore.
So I was "completely wrong" when I wrote: "The only time you should force an app to close is if it becomes unresponsive or erratic"? An app draining the battery or causing performance problems is, by definition, erratic behavior.
Re-read the editorial, I never said force closing apps was a bad thing — I said compulsively doing it to save battery life is a bad thing. It's one of our most-read articles of all time, and it continues to be a hot-button issue (hence the debate here in the forums), so we decided to turn it into a video for our audience that prefers that format.
Quote: "The truth is, that habit is a waste of time."
I guess this line should really say: "Force quitting apps will generally have little or no effect on battery life, however some apps will drain battery life faster if they are performing certain background processes. Use your own judgment."
The "habit" I am referring to is not selectively closing problematic apps. The habit is people who compulsively close everything, all the time, for no reason whatsoever.
If you want to manage recently used apps? Fine. If an app is misbehaving? Fine. If your phone is running weird and you don't know what app it is so you just want to kill them all? Fine. Those aren't habits, they're legitimate, valid use case scenarios. The need to constantly force close all apps (a common practice, from what I have seen) satisfies nothing except for someone's obsessive compulsive disorder.
The editorial is nearly two years old, but I stand by it, including the assertion that the habit is a waste of time.
I think Neil Hughes did a PSA a while back about this and got flamed quite well in the comments.
Anyway, this is all true. They even talked about it during the keynote where iOS 3 (I think) was unveiled.
Force quitting is, generally, a waste of time, effort and battery life.
He got flamed because he was completely wrong! Compulsive closing might not be a good idea but it will resolve issues when one or more apps is draining the battery or causing performance problems. This is so easy to verify that one has to wonder why we even have this discussion anymore.
So I was "completely wrong" when I wrote: "The only time you should force an app to close is if it becomes unresponsive or erratic"? An app draining the battery or causing performance problems is, by definition, erratic behavior.
Re-read the editorial, I never said force closing apps was a bad thing — I said compulsively doing it to save battery life is a bad thing. It's one of our most-read articles of all time, and it continues to be a hot-button issue (hence the debate here in the forums), so we decided to turn it into a video for our audience that prefers that format.
Quote: "The truth is, that habit is a waste of time."
I guess this line should really say: "Force quitting apps will generally have little or no effect on battery life, however some apps will drain battery life faster if they are performing certain background processes. Use your own judgment."
The "habit" I am referring to is not selectively closing problematic apps. The habit is people who compulsively close everything, all the time, for no reason whatsoever.
If you want to manage recently used apps? Fine. If an app is misbehaving? Fine. If your phone is running weird and you don't know what app it is so you just want to kill them all? Fine. Those aren't habits, they're legitimate, valid use case scenarios. The need to constantly force close all apps (a common practice, from what I have seen) satisfies nothing except for someone's obsessive compulsive disorder.
The editorial is nearly two years old, but I stand by it, including the assertion that the habit is a waste of time.
Whose time is being "wasted"? That's a value judgment. I don't know what another person values. If they want to open twenty apps and close them every ten minutes, that's their time to spend, not mine.
Comments
There is just no nice way to put this: you don't understand the way the device works.
I seem to recall the Facebook app causing short battery life even when it wasn't "active" a while back.
I'll add some clarity here.
When you send an app to the background it's given time to finish any remaining tasks. At some point iOS will put that app to sleep (suspended). The system expects those remaining tasks to finish quickly so it can spare your battery.
The thing to note is that iOS developers were granted the ability to WORK while in the background in iOS 4 and expanded through later releases. Meaning, we can ask Apple to periodically "wake us up" so we can perform any necessary tasks that may improve your experience the next time you visit the app. This can range from a wide variety of things (while discouraged, devs can make OpenGL draw calls...). While foreground apps always have precedence, an app woken up in the background can go to town on a wide variety of tasks for a short period of time.
So yes, technically, the apps in your switcher are alive and well these days (popular apps have adopted this background behavior by now). Closing these manually will prevent apps from doing any of that background work since a developer can't tell iOS to launch an app from a clean slate.
For those suffering terrible battery life keep that list clean. For those who look for an optimal app experiences leave 'em be.
You can even test this by shutdown your iPhone and then as soon as you boot it up and log in you can access FAS again to see all these apps listed in the same order they were last used. Now, homelike you that defies facts will then try to claim that the system will then boot these apps in the background. You may even claim that this causes your iPhone boot time to be longer and then recommend that you clear out FAS before turning off your device, but you'd be wrong again. You can also this by loading up a bunch of apps that have long start up times, preferably with launch screens, like games. Then shutdown your device and then when it restarts tap those apps again from FAS to see that they will have the same extended launch times they do when they're not in a sleep state.
There appear to be two (ok 3) concerns raised by the "pro-quit" camp. 1. These apps are "doing something" that is taking up CPU cycles and eating into my battery life. 2. These apps are "wasting" memory. (3. They clutter up the list of apps when I go to the app switcher). My understanding is that 1. is possibly true and a good reason to kill certain apps but 2. is a waste of time.
The memory model for iOS is as follows: apps get as much memory as they need/request so long as they are the active (front) app. Background apps can keep their memory until the system needs memory for the front app (or system stuff). When memory is needed, the system sends a message to all apps telling them to free up as much memory as possible. Well-behaved apps will respond to that message by clearing cache memory and otherwise reducing its memory footprint. This happens nearly instantaneously. Either this frees up enough memory to allow the front app to proceed or it doesn't. If it doesn't the system then--in a vary draconian fashion--starts telling background apps to shut down (and they do).
So when you bring a background app to the front, one of three things happen from a memory perspective. In the "best" case, the app never had to give up any memory, so it's ready to go. Alternatively, it's given up some memory so some cached resources have to be restored (from disk or the network). Or, the app had been killed and it needs to boot up from scratch. The user is not told which of these occurs (much might be able to tell based on duration or progress bars). Therefore users had the impression that background apps are always using up memory, when in fact they are only allowed to keep memory if other foreground applications didn't need it. Therefore manually killing background apps just to free up memory is completely pointless. iOS does that automatically.
We have this discussion because there are people who have a negative opinion of iOS because they believe that closing apps manually is a necessary habit required because of poor OS design. If people checked Settings > Battery to see the battery usage data (last 24 hours and last 7 days) they would learn that most of they apps they are killing by routinely killing all background apps have no appreciable power usage. Killing apps "just because" is preventing them from doing things that are more effective and productive (like tuning app permissions and avoiding poorly written power-hog apps).
Re-read the editorial, I never said force closing apps was a bad thing — I said compulsively doing it to save battery life is a bad thing. It's one of our most-read articles of all time, and it continues to be a hot-button issue (hence the debate here in the forums), so we decided to turn it into a video for our audience that prefers that format.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/10/21/stop-force-closing-apps-on-your-iphone-its-not-making-it-run-faster-or-last-longer
Ask yourself this, if you just closed all apps and the system returned to normal operation, is the practice good or bad? Further if you identify an app that consistently causes you problems does it not make sense to compulsively close that app? Unfortunaty to many want to bury their hears in the sand hereand believe one practice is good 100% of the time.
I guess this line should really say: "Force quitting apps will generally have little or no effect on battery life, however some apps will drain battery life faster if they are performing certain background processes. Use your own judgment."
Looking for absolute snswers here is a fools errand. Rather operate your machine with a little intelligence.
If you want to manage recently used apps? Fine. If an app is misbehaving? Fine. If your phone is running weird and you don't know what app it is so you just want to kill them all? Fine. Those aren't habits, they're legitimate, valid use case scenarios. The need to constantly force close all apps (a common practice, from what I have seen) satisfies nothing except for someone's obsessive compulsive disorder.
The editorial is nearly two years old, but I stand by it, including the assertion that the habit is a waste of time.