People still think that apps in the background are locking up unnecessary RAM and draining unnecessary battery power? Here I thought I am not the only one who know that is not how iOS works.
The iOS system is designed so that Apps in the background are effectively “frozen”, the RAM they were using get reclaimed and because they really do unfreeze and come back to life that quickly it give the impression that they never stopped running. But they do. iOS is actually the only system that is the best at limiting what they can do in the background and freeing up the RAM they were using when in frozen state. iOS is really, really good at this. It is so good at this that unfreezing a frozen app takes up way less CPU and power than relaunching an app that had been force quit. Not only does force quitting your apps not help, it actually hurts. Your battery life will be worse and it will take much longer to switch apps if you force quit apps in the background.
A lot of hard work went into making iOS work like this. It’s a huge technical advantage that iOS holds over Android. And every iPhone user in the world who habitually force quits background apps manually is wasting all of the effort that went into this while simultaneously wasting their own device’s battery life and making everything slower for themselves. Leave that habit to Android devices. I agree that they are a handful apps that really do continue running in the background, wasting battery life such as Facebook used to be, abusing the loopholes. But don’t let one bad app spoil the whole barrel. Just use Battery section in the iOS Settings app to show you which apps are actually consuming energy in the background, do not force quit any apps that genuinely are not the culprit.
rrrize said:Therefore, ask yourself, "Why does the force-quit option exist if it is not ever necessary?" Good question, right?
No, it's a ridiculous question because no one is saying that it's not occasionally prudent to force quit an app, but you're repeatedly wrong to suggest that every app listed in FAS is an app running in the background.
What I am saying is that the statement: "Stop force closing all apps on your iPhone, it's a waste of time" is an erroneous statement.
Again, that's wrong. There's no reason to manually remove all apps from the FAS list. If you have an app that you know—or even suspect—is causing issue you may want to kill it.
If you want to be intelligent and informed about which apps are using services that are detrimental to your device use then check out @jony0's post (#63). He quickly details many simple ways in which to see which apps use the most battery life and how to deal with them in the correct order.
If you ever want to spreading something other than lies you may want to look for a middle ground. For instance, I've submitted to Apple that they need to offer up icons (or something) that indicate which apps are still active in FAS. Not unlike how they use different color pointers in the Task Bar and next to the app in Location Services to indicate which apps are using the GPS and when. Add that, plus some simple method to show which apps are both still in RAM and have Background Refresh, using the internet, and the other background APIs offered to developers. The problem with this is that it can easily become a quagmire of technobabble that users will not understand, but they already have an issue with people like you that say "removing ALL apps from FAS regardless of when you last reboot the device and how long ago that app was used are saying that it's "an erroneous statement" to say that ALL apps need not be removed from FAS.
The fact is that TODAY there are no indicators and that TODAY it's simpler and quicker to close all apps rather the go into settings and navigate to power wait a sec for the usage to update, and then double click and swipe anyway to close apps.
Is this concept really that tough for you? Again, removing items from FAS that aren't running is akin to clearing our your Recents. You really need to stop saying that all apps listed in FAS are running. Are you that dense or are you purposely pushing a disingenuous narrative?
That the "reason" you claim doesn't exist: it's faster and easier to close all apps than for the average user to try figure out what's going wrong.
No it's not, because it's something the dimwitted do all the time.
If your not a dummy, and you've look and adjusted your app settings to limit what apps can do in the background and checked their battery life usage you never have to remove every… fucking… app… to deal with one app. Since I've never removed any app it would probably take me at least 5 minutes to swipe through all the apps I've ever opened since I purchased the device. That means that restarting the phone is faster if there's some system glitch, but this rarely happens. Instead I just force quit the one app I know is having issues. I also usually know why the app is acting up and can even predict when this will happen because instead of both acting like a moron and defending an action that only serves a purpose to those with OCD, I decided to be smart by using a systematic approach to understand what's happening and why.
Strawman. I have never said that all apps in the list is running. Nor have I ever claimed that properly suspended apps take any resources of note.
it is not a "dangerous narrative". Closing all your apps harms nothing.
You are excessively abusive over something this trivial. There's nothing wrong with closing all your apps instead of looking for one bad app and for most folks it's much faster than setting permissions or looking for poorly behaving apps.
You've been reported. Enjoy your day.
1) You've just said it once again. Is it really that difficult for you to understand that removing an old app listed in FAS is not necessarily closing the app?
2) You really should check out @jony0 post instead of pushing your false narrative. At least try to learn something instead of blindly trashing AI's video.
Nope never said that ever. App state in the FAS can be background (aka running), suspended (using some resources) or closed (using no resources). So obviously not all apps in the FAS is running. Removing an already closed app from the FAS doesn't do anything useful but also doesn't harm anything either.
Removing an app from the FAS does close it if it is in either background or suspended. So removing all the apps in FAS send any background or suspended app the same close event the OS sends to reclaim resources. And again, for most folks it's faster to remove all the apps vs opening settings, entering battery and then waiting for the usage indicator to update what apps have used what.
I will comment that to leave all the apps you've ever used in the FAS defeats the "fast" part of switching as the list of apps is larger.
I have made no comment on the AI video positive or negative.
The following happens to me on a weekly basis: all of a sudden Safari won't load a webpage - it will just sit there teasing me with its tiny blue progress line. So I close a bunch of apps and when I return to Safari the page loads lickety-split. I have a ton of tabs open, which may or may not also cause a problem. But hey, the 'experts' keep telling me it's pointless to close apps, so my experience must be bs right?!
Are you using 5Ghz Wifi?... switch to 2.4 WIFI and see if it happens... i have noticed that 5Ghz wifi, after apple fixed the wifi broadcompwn bug, messed up 5Ghz wifi in that sometimes it just stalls when the signal strength is around two bars.
rrrize said:Therefore, ask yourself, "Why does the force-quit option exist if it is not ever necessary?" Good question, right?
No, it's a ridiculous question because no one is saying that it's not occasionally prudent to force quit an app, but you're repeatedly wrong to suggest that every app listed in FAS is an app running in the background.
What I am saying is that the statement: "Stop force closing all apps on your iPhone, it's a waste of time" is an erroneous statement.
Again, that's wrong. There's no reason to manually remove all apps from the FAS list. If you have an app that you know—or even suspect—is causing issue you may want to kill it.
If you want to be intelligent and informed about which apps are using services that are detrimental to your device use then check out @jony0's post (#63). He quickly details many simple ways in which to see which apps use the most battery life and how to deal with them in the correct order.
If you ever want to spreading something other than lies you may want to look for a middle ground. For instance, I've submitted to Apple that they need to offer up icons (or something) that indicate which apps are still active in FAS. Not unlike how they use different color pointers in the Task Bar and next to the app in Location Services to indicate which apps are using the GPS and when. Add that, plus some simple method to show which apps are both still in RAM and have Background Refresh, using the internet, and the other background APIs offered to developers. The problem with this is that it can easily become a quagmire of technobabble that users will not understand, but they already have an issue with people like you that say "removing ALL apps from FAS regardless of when you last reboot the device and how long ago that app was used are saying that it's "an erroneous statement" to say that ALL apps need not be removed from FAS.
Blah blah blah
The fact is that TODAY there are no indicators and that TODAY it's simpler and quicker to close all apps rather the go into settings and navigate to power wait a sec for the usage to update, and then double click and swipe anyway to close apps.
If you're having any odd issues on your phone it's much quicker to double click and swipe swipe swipe done. It doesn't harm anything and has demonstrably fixed issues with battery usage and sluggish behavior.
All the alternatives to simply force quitting all apps requires users to play system admin to figure out which are the bad apps and to manually configure background activity settings.
That the "reason" you claim doesn't exist: it's faster and easier to close all apps than for the average user to try figure out what's going wrong.
It's also faster and easier to tell your grandma to double click and swipe close all the apps than to talk her through looking to see which ones might be bad. It's not a "lie".
Here's an article from someone who has gone through the effort of comparing the two behaviors of app management:
I dont force close all apps every day but anytime my battery is low or the phone running hot or slow I do. It doesn't hurt anything and fixes a lot.
This is exactly correct. In addition, many of these apps are not doing anything wrong and I don't want to tweak their background settings, I just need to close them if I don't need them. For example, weather apps can be big battery drainers, I assume because they are using location services. I don't want to turn this feature off because I want those location alerts for lightning, etc. when I have them in the background. But if I don't need them and I don't want the battery drain, then it is better to force close them rather than tweak their settings. Many apps use location services etc. and I don't want to tweak all of their settings, I just close everything out when I am low on battery. (And/or turn on low-power mode, one of the primary features of which is reducing "background app refresh.")
I don't give a crap whether it's effective at prolonging battery life, or reducing memory usage, or not. Force closing apps reduces clutter in the UI, and that's worth it to me.
I do it 9/10 for my OCD. Tweaking the background setting on apps works MUCH better at reducing battery drain.
What gets my goat most on iPhone however is the photos app taking up GB's of space when it's empty. I backup all my photos regularly and delete them from my iphone, I then delete from the "deleted items" folder. I have photo cloud and photo sharing switched off, yet I ALWAYS have 1.5GB minimum of photos on my device according to the storage section in settings - thus I keep getting the "out of memory" messages and can do nothing about it except delete apps that I DO use.
The only temporary cure is for me to do a clean iOS install every other month but the photos storage quickly fills up again.
The only time I find this not a waste of time, is if you go around 5-6 months and you have 40-50 app "snapshots" hanging around, if you don't have a lot of RAM i.e. memory like 1 GB, it can slow things down. So you don't want to let it go too long, cause remember, those "images" and/or "snapshots" of the app are "there." There is memory usage...
The only time I find this not a waste of time, is if you go around 5-6 months and you have 40-50 app "snapshots" hanging around, if you don't have a lot of RAM i.e. memory like 1 GB, it can slow things down. So you don't want to let it go too long, cause remember, those "images" and/or "snapshots" of the app are "there." There is memory usage...
No.
They are not in RAM. App snapshots are stored in the applications' data on the drive, and how full that is has no effect upon system speed, as iOS does not use virtual memory.
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.
This is the second article to appear on the same topic. Despite clear logic and well written article, many of us don't get it. And yes, despite what Apple executives and documentation say. I think the issue here is that perhaps the authors have misidentified the problem. Many of us don't swipe up and get rid of apps because we're worried about background resources; we're trying to get rid of the dozen apps, some we haven't used in several days, cluttering up the app switcher. The authors keep saying we're wasting time. No we're not. We're trying to make it easier to switch back and forth between apps we're currently using and not have to flip through 15 other apps. If we're not doing something right, please explain or offer solutions. Do Apple execs scroll through 20 apps on the app switcher?
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.
This is the second article to appear on the same topic. Despite clear logic and well written article, many of us don't get it. And yes, despite what Apple executives and documentation say. I think the issue here is that perhaps the authors have misidentified the problem. Many of us don't swipe up and get rid of apps because we're worried about background resources; we're trying to get rid of the dozen apps, some we haven't used in several days, cluttering up the app switcher. The authors keep saying we're wasting time. No we're not. We're trying to make it easier to switch back and forth between apps we're currently using and not have to flip through 15 other apps. If we're not doing something right, please explain or offer solutions. Do Apple execs scroll through 20 apps on the app switcher?
You're not making any sense:
Firstly: There is no difference in flipping between the last five or so used apps, whether there are just those five apps in the switcher, or a hundred and twenty. The last-used apps are right there under your thumb.
Secondly: if you keep "quitting" all your apps all the time (which you're not, as most of them are long since quit; you're just removing them from the list), you have to resort to launching them from the home screens, which...you can do just as well when they're far down in the switcher, or if you prefer not to use the switcher at all.
So: either they're there in the first few cards if the switcher stack for quick access, and if they're not right there, then it makes no difference whether you've removed them or not, as you'll be launching from the home screen anyway.
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.
This is the second article to appear on the same topic. Despite clear logic and well written article, many of us don't get it. And yes, despite what Apple executives and documentation say. I think the issue here is that perhaps the authors have misidentified the problem. Many of us don't swipe up and get rid of apps because we're worried about background resources; we're trying to get rid of the dozen apps, some we haven't used in several days, cluttering up the app switcher. The authors keep saying we're wasting time. No we're not. We're trying to make it easier to switch back and forth between apps we're currently using and not have to flip through 15 other apps. If we're not doing something right, please explain or offer solutions. Do Apple execs scroll through 20 apps on the app switcher?
You're not making any sense:
Firstly: There is no difference in flipping between the last five or so used apps, whether there are just those five apps in the switcher, or a hundred and twenty. The last-used apps are right there under your thumb.
Secondly: if you keep "quitting" all your apps all the time (which you're not, as most of them are long since quit; you're just removing them from the list), you have to resort to launching them from the home screens, which...you can do just as well when they're far down in the switcher, or if you prefer not to use the switcher at all.
So: either they're there in the first few cards if the switcher stack for quick access, and if they're not right there, then it makes no difference whether you've removed them or not, as you'll be launching from the home screen anyway.
It's ridiculous. He paints it like it's icons on your desktop cluttering your view, when there's no difference from him finding the 3rd app back he used today to me finding it, despite having every single app I've used since I bought my iPhone nearly a year ago in that list.
The only time I find this not a waste of time, is if you go around 5-6 months and you have 40-50 app "snapshots" hanging around, if you don't have a lot of RAM i.e. memory like 1 GB, it can slow things down. So you don't want to let it go too long, cause remember, those "images" and/or "snapshots" of the app are "there." There is memory usage...
No.
They are not in RAM. App snapshots are stored in the applications' data on the drive, and how full that is has no effect upon system speed, as iOS does not use virtual memory.
The FAS hold a screen snapshot of all apps so it does take up some RAM. Maybe a MB or so each. I don't know if iOS clears out the snapshot (both screen snapshot and state) of terminated apps but if it does it may help a bit if you are really short on disk.
This is the second article to appear on the same topic. Despite clear logic and well written article, many of us don't get it. And yes, despite what Apple executives and documentation say. I think the issue here is that perhaps the authors have misidentified the problem. Many of us don't swipe up and get rid of apps because we're worried about background resources; we're trying to get rid of the dozen apps, some we haven't used in several days, cluttering up the app switcher. The authors keep saying we're wasting time. No we're not. We're trying to make it easier to switch back and forth between apps we're currently using and not have to flip through 15 other apps. If we're not doing something right, please explain or offer solutions. Do Apple execs scroll through 20 apps on the app switcher?
You're not making any sense:
Firstly: There is no difference in flipping between the last five or so used apps, whether there are just those five apps in the switcher, or a hundred and twenty. The last-used apps are right there under your thumb.
Secondly: if you keep "quitting" all your apps all the time (which you're not, as most of them are long since quit; you're just removing them from the list), you have to resort to launching them from the home screens, which...you can do just as well when they're far down in the switcher, or if you prefer not to use the switcher at all.
So: either they're there in the first few cards if the switcher stack for quick access, and if they're not right there, then it makes no difference whether you've removed them or not, as you'll be launching from the home screen anyway.
It's ridiculous. He paints it like it's icons on your desktop cluttering your view, when there's no difference from him finding the 3rd app back he used today to me finding it, despite having every single app I've used since I bought my iPhone nearly a year ago in that list.
From a UI perspective the fastest access is to the first and last apps in the FAS when there are only a few apps in the FAS. You can swipe quickly to get to app #5 without overshooting as you would with 50 apps in the FAS.
Does it really matter? No, it's just personal preference. Kill apps in the FAS if it makes you happy as it doesn't hurt anything. The battery impact is negligible for restarting apps from scratch vs from snapshot. Yes, it costs more start to app from scratch but in terms of percentage of total power used for entire app session it's pretty much noise.
For folks that don't know who to believe just download a free memory usage app from the App Store and test for yourself on the apps you actually use.
For the most part iOS does a good job of memory management that you don't need to bother worrying about it but if your iOS device feels sluggish then fire up the memory usage app and clear your FAS. If you like a full FAS for whatever reason then simply reboot. All the background and suspended apps should be terminated after a reboot.
This is the second article to appear on the same topic. Despite clear logic and well written article, many of us don't get it. And yes, despite what Apple executives and documentation say. I think the issue here is that perhaps the authors have misidentified the problem. Many of us don't swipe up and get rid of apps because we're worried about background resources; we're trying to get rid of the dozen apps, some we haven't used in several days, cluttering up the app switcher. The authors keep saying we're wasting time. No we're not. We're trying to make it easier to switch back and forth between apps we're currently using and not have to flip through 15 other apps. If we're not doing something right, please explain or offer solutions. Do Apple execs scroll through 20 apps on the app switcher?
You're not making any sense:
Firstly: There is no difference in flipping between the last five or so used apps, whether there are just those five apps in the switcher, or a hundred and twenty. The last-used apps are right there under your thumb.
Secondly: if you keep "quitting" all your apps all the time (which you're not, as most of them are long since quit; you're just removing them from the list), you have to resort to launching them from the home screens, which...you can do just as well when they're far down in the switcher, or if you prefer not to use the switcher at all.
So: either they're there in the first few cards if the switcher stack for quick access, and if they're not right there, then it makes no difference whether you've removed them or not, as you'll be launching from the home screen anyway.
It's ridiculous. He paints it like it's icons on your desktop cluttering your view, when there's no difference from him finding the 3rd app back he used today to me finding it, despite having every single app I've used since I bought my iPhone nearly a year ago in that list.
Does it really matter? No, it's just personal preference. Kill apps in the FAS if it makes you happy as it doesn't hurt anything. The battery impact is negligible for restarting apps from scratch vs from snapshot. Yes, it costs more start to app from scratch but in terms of percentage of total power used for entire app session it's pretty much noise.
1) Spreding lies does matter, especially when you’re reciting them to techtads as canon.
2) I’ve personally never done a battery test but it seems that if you’re constantly spending time in FAS to clear it out and constantly killing apps hat have to restart without having a saved state in the NAND or reload all the data into RAM it may need then you could significantly hinder your mobile device’s usage. Even just 5% is a huge hit to a device that is a lifeline.
3) Let’s be clear that OCD isn’t the most commonly stated reap for cleatjbg our FAS—it’s the false notion that all apps listed in FAS are running, which usually gets paired with a complex lack of understanding of looking at battery life per app and adjusting location services and background processes in Settings.
Someone that understands the technology and cares about battery life would relay that info to others. Additionally, the fist thing I do after installing a new app is verify and adjust these options in Settings. I would hope that most people on this forum would also make such a simple, proactive measure.
This is the second article to appear on the same topic. Despite clear logic and well written article, many of us don't get it. And yes, despite what Apple executives and documentation say. I think the issue here is that perhaps the authors have misidentified the problem. Many of us don't swipe up and get rid of apps because we're worried about background resources; we're trying to get rid of the dozen apps, some we haven't used in several days, cluttering up the app switcher. The authors keep saying we're wasting time. No we're not. We're trying to make it easier to switch back and forth between apps we're currently using and not have to flip through 15 other apps. If we're not doing something right, please explain or offer solutions. Do Apple execs scroll through 20 apps on the app switcher?
You're not making any sense:
Firstly: There is no difference in flipping between the last five or so used apps, whether there are just those five apps in the switcher, or a hundred and twenty. The last-used apps are right there under your thumb.
Secondly: if you keep "quitting" all your apps all the time (which you're not, as most of them are long since quit; you're just removing them from the list), you have to resort to launching them from the home screens, which...you can do just as well when they're far down in the switcher, or if you prefer not to use the switcher at all.
So: either they're there in the first few cards if the switcher stack for quick access, and if they're not right there, then it makes no difference whether you've removed them or not, as you'll be launching from the home screen anyway.
It's ridiculous. He paints it like it's icons on your desktop cluttering your view, when there's no difference from him finding the 3rd app back he used today to me finding it, despite having every single app I've used since I bought my iPhone nearly a year ago in that list.
Does it really matter? No, it's just personal preference. Kill apps in the FAS if it makes you happy as it doesn't hurt anything. The battery impact is negligible for restarting apps from scratch vs from snapshot. Yes, it costs more start to app from scratch but in terms of percentage of total power used for entire app session it's pretty much noise.
1) Spreding lies does matter, especially when you’re reciting them to techtads as canon.
2) I’ve personally never done a battery test but it seems that if myou’re constantly spending time in FAS to clear it out and cconstantly killing apps hat have to restart without having a saved state in the NAND or reload all the data into RAM it may need then you could significantly hinder your mobile device’s usage. Even just 5% is a huge hit to a device that is a lifeline.
3) Let’s be clear that OCD isn’t the most commonly stated reap for cleatjbg our FAS—it’s the false notion that all apps listed in FAS are running, which usually gets paired with a complex lack of understanding of looking at battery life per app and adjusting location services and background processes in Settings.
Someone that understands the technology and cares about battery life would relay that info to others. Additionally, the fist thing I do after installing a new app is verify and adjust these options in Settings. I would hope that most people on this forum would also make such a simple, proactive measure.
1) it's not a lie. Clearing the FAS does no harm and can help with poorly running apps that have not suspended correctly.
2) if you've never done a battery test then you don't know but are willing to disagree with those that have done tests and have shown that the cost of starting apps from scratch vs suspended isn't significant in comparison to the amount of power used overall. Folks don't usually clear their FAS every time they switch apps so most suspended apps will still be suspended for them. If they clear out terminated apps it makes no difference. User terminated and system terminated apps are in the same app state.
Also clearing out large suspended apps that you aren't likely to switch back to will allow iOS to keep more apps in the suspended state that you are likely to switch back to.
3) while it is an oversimplification that all apps are running in the background it is also an oversimplification that clearing the FAS does no good.
You also continue to fail to accept that for most folks, even those well aware of how iOS functions, finds it faster to simply clear the FAS than to bother with debugging which app is the trouble maker when the iOS device is running sluggish or reboot the phone.
You also refuse to accept that app configuration isn't always sufficiently granular to achieve what folks want to do. For example, I want certain apps to stay running all the time in background using location services when I'm actively using them but not run at all when I don't care about them. Killing it in the FAS ensures it's not burning resources when I'm not really using it.
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.
This is the second article to appear on the same topic. Despite clear logic and well written article, many of us don't get it. And yes, despite what Apple executives and documentation say. I think the issue here is that perhaps the authors have misidentified the problem. Many of us don't swipe up and get rid of apps because we're worried about background resources; we're trying to get rid of the dozen apps, some we haven't used in several days, cluttering up the app switcher. The authors keep saying we're wasting time. No we're not. We're trying to make it easier to switch back and forth between apps we're currently using and not have to flip through 15 other apps. If we're not doing something right, please explain or offer solutions. Do Apple execs scroll through 20 apps on the app switcher?
They probably launch stuff straight from the Springboard and using Spotlight’s Siri suggestions or typing the first couple letters for anything not on the first page, like anyone who knows how to efficiently use their phone. I only use the FAS for switching between the last couple open apps because scrolling through the whole list is not efficient.
The only time I find this not a waste of time, is if you go around 5-6 months and you have 40-50 app "snapshots" hanging around, if you don't have a lot of RAM i.e. memory like 1 GB, it can slow things down. So you don't want to let it go too long, cause remember, those "images" and/or "snapshots" of the app are "there." There is memory usage...
No.
They are not in RAM. App snapshots are stored in the applications' data on the drive, and how full that is has no effect upon system speed, as iOS does not use virtual memory.
The FAS hold a screen snapshot of all apps so it does take up some RAM. Maybe a MB or so each. I don't know if iOS clears out the snapshot (both screen snapshot and state) of terminated apps but if it does it may help a bit if you are really short on disk.
Are you talking about RAM or storage? Either way, if you’re talking about a handful of MB-sized files in order to free up either, you’re wasting your time.
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.
This is the second article to appear on the same topic. Despite clear logic and well written article, many of us don't get it. And yes, despite what Apple executives and documentation say. I think the issue here is that perhaps the authors have misidentified the problem. Many of us don't swipe up and get rid of apps because we're worried about background resources; we're trying to get rid of the dozen apps, some we haven't used in several days, cluttering up the app switcher. The authors keep saying we're wasting time. No we're not. We're trying to make it easier to switch back and forth between apps we're currently using and not have to flip through 15 other apps. If we're not doing something right, please explain or offer solutions. Do Apple execs scroll through 20 apps on the app switcher?
You're not making any sense:
Firstly: There is no difference in flipping between the last five or so used apps, whether there are just those five apps in the switcher, or a hundred and twenty. The last-used apps are right there under your thumb.
Secondly: if you keep "quitting" all your apps all the time (which you're not, as most of them are long since quit; you're just removing them from the list), you have to resort to launching them from the home screens, which...you can do just as well when they're far down in the switcher, or if you prefer not to use the switcher at all.
So: either they're there in the first few cards if the switcher stack for quick access, and if they're not right there, then it makes no difference whether you've removed them or not, as you'll be launching from the home screen anyway.
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The iOS system is designed so that Apps in the background are effectively “frozen”, the RAM they were using get reclaimed and because they really do unfreeze and come back to life that quickly it give the impression that they never stopped running. But they do. iOS is actually the only system that is the best at limiting what they can do in the background and freeing up the RAM they were using when in frozen state. iOS is really, really good at this. It is so good at this that unfreezing a frozen app takes up way less CPU and power than relaunching an app that had been force quit. Not only does force quitting your apps not help, it actually hurts. Your battery life will be worse and it will take much longer to switch apps if you force quit apps in the background.
A lot of hard work went into making iOS work like this. It’s a huge technical advantage that iOS holds over Android. And every iPhone user in the world who habitually force quits background apps manually is wasting all of the effort that went into this while simultaneously wasting their own device’s battery life and making everything slower for themselves. Leave that habit to Android devices.
I agree that they are a handful apps that really do continue running in the background, wasting battery life such as Facebook used to be, abusing the loopholes. But don’t let one bad app spoil the whole barrel. Just use Battery section in the iOS Settings app to show you which apps are actually consuming energy in the background, do not force quit any apps that genuinely are not the culprit.
Removing an app from the FAS does close it if it is in either background or suspended. So removing all the apps in FAS send any background or suspended app the same close event the OS sends to reclaim resources. And again, for most folks it's faster to remove all the apps vs opening settings, entering battery and then waiting for the usage indicator to update what apps have used what.
I will comment that to leave all the apps you've ever used in the FAS defeats the "fast" part of switching as the list of apps is larger.
I have made no comment on the AI video positive or negative.
I don't give a crap whether it's effective at prolonging battery life, or reducing memory usage, or not. Force closing apps reduces clutter in the UI, and that's worth it to me.
It's my time to waste.
What gets my goat most on iPhone however is the photos app taking up GB's of space when it's empty. I backup all my photos regularly and delete them from my iphone, I then delete from the "deleted items" folder. I have photo cloud and photo sharing switched off, yet I ALWAYS have 1.5GB minimum of photos on my device according to the storage section in settings - thus I keep getting the "out of memory" messages and can do nothing about it except delete apps that I DO use.
The only temporary cure is for me to do a clean iOS install every other month but the photos storage quickly fills up again.
They are not in RAM. App snapshots are stored in the applications' data on the drive, and how full that is has no effect upon system speed, as iOS does not use virtual memory.
Firstly: There is no difference in flipping between the last five or so used apps, whether there are just those five apps in the switcher, or a hundred and twenty. The last-used apps are right there under your thumb.
Secondly: if you keep "quitting" all your apps all the time (which you're not, as most of them are long since quit; you're just removing them from the list), you have to resort to launching them from the home screens, which...you can do just as well when they're far down in the switcher, or if you prefer not to use the switcher at all.
So: either they're there in the first few cards if the switcher stack for quick access, and if they're not right there, then it makes no difference whether you've removed them or not, as you'll be launching from the home screen anyway.
Does it really matter? No, it's just personal preference. Kill apps in the FAS if it makes you happy as it doesn't hurt anything. The battery impact is negligible for restarting apps from scratch vs from snapshot. Yes, it costs more start to app from scratch but in terms of percentage of total power used for entire app session it's pretty much noise.
For the most part iOS does a good job of memory management that you don't need to bother worrying about it but if your iOS device feels sluggish then fire up the memory usage app and clear your FAS. If you like a full FAS for whatever reason then simply reboot. All the background and suspended apps should be terminated after a reboot.
2) I’ve personally never done a battery test but it seems that if you’re constantly spending time in FAS to clear it out and constantly killing apps hat have to restart without having a saved state in the NAND or reload all the data into RAM it may need then you could significantly hinder your mobile device’s usage. Even just 5% is a huge hit to a device that is a lifeline.
3) Let’s be clear that OCD isn’t the most commonly stated reap for cleatjbg our FAS—it’s the false notion that all apps listed in FAS are running, which usually gets paired with a complex lack of understanding of looking at battery life per app and adjusting location services and background processes in Settings.
Someone that understands the technology and cares about battery life would relay that info to others. Additionally, the fist thing I do after installing a new app is verify and adjust these options in Settings. I would hope that most people on this forum would also make such a simple, proactive measure.
2) if you've never done a battery test then you don't know but are willing to disagree with those that have done tests and have shown that the cost of starting apps from scratch vs suspended isn't significant in comparison to the amount of power used overall. Folks don't usually clear their FAS every time they switch apps so most suspended apps will still be suspended for them. If they clear out terminated apps it makes no difference. User terminated and system terminated apps are in the same app state.
Also clearing out large suspended apps that you aren't likely to switch back to will allow iOS to keep more apps in the suspended state that you are likely to switch back to.
3) while it is an oversimplification that all apps are running in the background it is also an oversimplification that clearing the FAS does no good.
You also continue to fail to accept that for most folks, even those well aware of how iOS functions, finds it faster to simply clear the FAS than to bother with debugging which app is the trouble maker when the iOS device is running sluggish or reboot the phone.
You also refuse to accept that app configuration isn't always sufficiently granular to achieve what folks want to do. For example, I want certain apps to stay running all the time in background using location services when I'm actively using them but not run at all when I don't care about them. Killing it in the FAS ensures it's not burning resources when I'm not really using it.
Are you talking about RAM or storage? Either way, if you’re talking about a handful of MB-sized files in order to free up either, you’re wasting your time.