Stop force closing apps on your iPhone, it's not making it run faster or last longer

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 236
    This is so blatantly incorrect it's hilarious.
  • Reply 22 of 236
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by broderik View Post

     

    I'd have to pretty much quote everyone above me, but most of them are wrong. I have some more proof.

     

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201330 which states:

     

     

    There's also a video of someone actually monitoring ram and cpu usage of apps that are open and closed (this is back in the iOS 6 days, this was true even back then), which you can find here: 

     

    For a more in-depth explanation, read this: http://www.speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misconceptions-about-ios-multitasking.html

     

    TL;DR: Article is correct, most of the replies up to this point are incorrect personal variations "well MY experience using this app or this app means that the whole app ecosystem behaves this way"




    Hmm, first post, defends article...more than a little suspicious.

     

    Your own quote doesn't even support your argument. The term "Generally" does not mean "all of the time, all cases".

  • Reply 23 of 236
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Yes, there are some apps and instances where force-quitting is helpful. But for the majority of apps, it's not needed.
    This is true but it is also why this article is complete nonsense. It only takes one badly behaved app to siphon off a lot of battery power.
    The harm in doing this to every app all the time is that if you're doing it to apps you use frequently, it actually can use more battery life as it has to fully boot the app each time instead of pulling data from its frozen state.
    This largely depends upon the apps involved. However I've not seen many suggest doing this all the time for all apps. Instead the general idea is to avoid running problem apps and then suspending them. The other issue is simply having to many suspended apps in the task bar. I try to keep no more than about a half dozen active in the task bar, too many more just leads to sluggishness.
    So if your phone is slowing down or apps are hanging, by all means, shut some of them down. But I agree with this author that it shouldn't be a habit. If your phone is running smoothly, don't close the apps.

    In the course of two sentences you both agree and disagree with the author. The reality is this the categorical statement made by the author is completely bogus. IOS needs active app management as much as any other operating system. I can easily go for days or even weeks and never have to manage my phone or iPad but eventually you have too much junk active and have to deal with it manually to get performance back to where it should be.
  • Reply 24 of 236
    Quote:



    Originally Posted by Phone-UI-Guy View Post

     

     

    For apps not performing background operations, this article would be correct. For apps performing background operations, this article is incorrect. If you don't know the difference between the two types of apps, better safe than sorry when something is draining your battery in the background and kill them all. 


     

    For that you can switch off the "Background App Refresh" setting for that app. No need to force quit it. Apple has even made it easier with the Battery section of the settings, telling you which apps are actually running a lot in the background.

     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TheWhiteFalcon View Post

     



    Hmm, first post, defends article...more than a little suspicious.

     

    Your own quote doesn't even support your argument. The term "Generally" does not mean "all of the time, all cases".


     

    I'm typically a lurker on most boards I visit, but I felt obligated to reply since this misconception has been spreading for many years. :P

     

    Also, nobody is saying you never have to force quit an app. Facebook is a prime example of an app that misbehaves. I'm arguing against the need to do it most of the time on a regular basis.

  • Reply 25 of 236

    Not all apps affect speed or battery life, but some do.

     

    And quitting apps on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is important because of the anemic amount* of processor memory. Quitting apps increases the number of pages I can keep open in Safari without them redrawing/reloading constantly on my 6 Plus. Restarting your iPhone at least once a day helps too.

     

     

    *1GB, should have been 2GB, the new S models are proof of this. I could keep 7-8 pages open on my iPhone 5. On my 6 Plus, its 3... Maximum.

  • Reply 26 of 236
    So maybe it doesn't help to close all those apps, but does it hurt anything?
  • Reply 27 of 236

    While it's not as bad today, when 7.0 was out on the iPhone 4 if you had three or more apps open in the background the entire thing practically ground to a halt. That was a rough time.

  • Reply 28 of 236
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Which can be disabled.

    I agree with the article if you properly manage your "Background App Refresh" settings.  
    In aperfect world that might work but the world is far from perfect and there are a number of apps that get around the background app refresh controls. Managing those setting doesn't always solve a problem.
    Disable location tracking in the background for almost every app.  Disable background app refresh all together for apps you use sparingly - such as a wallpaper app.   

    If Background App Refresh is enabled only for apps you want, you can stop force closing apps forever.  

    This isn't true today and likely won't be true in the future as Apple enables more multitasking and background operation features.
  • Reply 29 of 236
    I would suggest to erase this article completely, it is disinformation, and people not taking the time to read all the comments will not be aware that the article is not giving the proper information.
  • Reply 30 of 236
    "However, many users mistakenly believe that all apps shown in the app switcher are currently running in the background on their phone, draining performance and battery. That's incorrect."

    How is it a waste of time? A lot of apps actually ask if they can run background tasks (like Waze) if their app is running in the background. Force quitting these apps stops them from doing these background-running tasks, which does actually make your battery last longer. I noticed it first hand when I noticed that Waze (amongst others) made my battery die within a day. Force quitting them made it last at least 4-5 days.
  • Reply 31 of 236
    jkichlinejkichline Posts: 1,369member

    I'd like to provide some insight as a developer.

     

    In an ideal world, the advice is correct. In fact, iOS 9 has made a change that basically will find background apps that are using the most memory and shut them down for you. So is iOS is running out of memory, it will handle freeing up memory.  The key word here is memory. iOS 9 is much better and has finer grained control over battery usage on a per app basis. I'm not sure if it shuts down based on battery usage.  It's unlikely since what we can do as developers in the background is rarely CPU intensive, or it *shouldn't* be intensive. For instance, playing back audio is generally what an app should be expected to do if it's turned on in the app, or if you started music.  Location-based apps shouldn't use full GPS in the background and instead use Apple's services which are less accurate but are shared and low in battery consumption.

     

    The keyword here is *shouldn't*.

     

    In my app, we have some audio features that require background audio. Typically you want to shut down the audio subsystem when you leave the app if music or audio is not playing.  However one of our audio playback frameworks had an incompatibility with iOS 8 that would cause the audio to not shut down since it was "in use".  We did everything we could to shutdown the audio, but we found we needed to fix the audio library.  This caused the the audio to remain active in the background which kept the whole app active in the background. This persisted for months since it wasn't obvious and no one reported the issue.



    The only solution was to force close the app.



    So... the truth is that in a perfect world with innocent developers and perfect code... no you wouldn't need to shut down apps.  However we live in an imperfect world.  Sometimes this is necessary.



    However... I do think people going crazy and shutting down all their apps is a dumb idea. It does not make sense. I would recommend that you first check your background app refresh and location services settings.

  • Reply 32 of 236
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bloggerblog View Post



    GPS apps can continue to GPS your location even when they're in the background.

    I was thinking the same thing. If I leave Maps on my iPhone 4s gets hotter. Or am I imagining this? :)

     

    Best

  • Reply 33 of 236
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member
    Article is completely correct nearly all of the time – the exception being certain specific misbehaving apps. Facebook is currently one of them and needs a fix now that they have been caught cheating.

    I have never force quit all my apps, ever, I have tons of apps allowed to use background tasks ranging from podcast downloads to 24/7 Dark Sky location tracking, and I've never had any battery problems. Most background stuff on iOS is way more efficient than some people expect. This is not Android! Not all background functionality is a battery-burner, but is often an efficient and useful feature. Background activity doesn't even always mean the executable is running! The OS has background services shared by all apps for many things. Such as location services – which very efficiently tracks your location and shares it with 10 apps just as efficiently as with 1, and does so with very little effect on battery. I used to be afraid of it, and now I have used it for two years with no perceptible battery loss.

    Force quitting is an occasional troubleshooting trick, but not something that most people should do all the time. And as the replies here show, way too many people do – which is pure voodoo. Geniuses have told people to do it too often as well – because it saved them the time of finding one misbehaving app.

    [B]But guess what? It doesn't have to be a mystery anymore: iOS 9 settings will show you the battery use of every app. Tap the app in the list and it will even break it down by foreground versus background.[/B]

    So look there. If there is an app using a ton of battery but it's not an app you use very much, consider force quitting it. Or stop using it, or disable background use (given that most apps don't cheat) or log out of it (in the case of Skype) and check again later.

    Otherwise don't waste your time with the voodoo. It's like wearing your lucky socks for the big game. Only it wastes more time, and slows your phone down re-opening things that should properly be cached in memory for frequent use!

    [B]If you find yourself deleting ALL apps from the recents list (and telling others to do the same!) you are misusing this troubleshooting tool! It's a scalpel. Don't treat it like a sledgehammer.[/B]

    And quitting all apps can actually hurt battery life, if it forces your phone to re-launch apps you have recently used.

    Stop doing work for your phone! Let your phone work for you – the way it was designed to.

    Seriously, try it for a week. See if you are really one of the tiny segment of people who needs to force quit all the time. (And if you are, you have another problem to troubleshoot. Fix the problem, don't waste your time every day. Force quit only the culprit!)
  • Reply 34 of 236

    Even on my iPad Air 2 (which has 2gb) I frequently "close" Safari when it starts lagging in refreshing/loading screens and it always helps.  So again this directly conflicts the authors statements.

  • Reply 35 of 236
    As mentioned, Facebook is designed to ignore system settings (apart from being a terrible app in general) and drains the battery so it should be closed completely (or better yet, deleted entirely).

    There's also a point where you can have too many apps open in the background. I try to keep it to the four or five I actually use the most, which in my case is Messages, Twitter, Mail, Safari and a forum app.

    I do the same. And while I never measured this scientifically, apart from the "cleaner" state (the app switcher is totally messy already IMO) I have the impression that my 6 is better with both, battery life and responsiveness. On my daughter's 4 it's quite obvious.

    What you said about the Facebook app I feel is also true for the messenger app. It uses a lot of battery even when mostly in background.
  • Reply 36 of 236
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SimonMTL View Post



    I would suggest to erase this article completely, it is disinformation, and people not taking the time to read all the comments will not be aware that the article is not giving the proper information.

    This article is true and correct. If you don't want apps running in the background then turn off Background Refresh for the relevant apps.

  • Reply 37 of 236
    I appreciate the author's opinion but this is simply not true. Quitting background apps without a doubt both improves my phone's battery life and the responsiveness of my phone. This is especially true when I run resource-intensive applications and leave them running in the background and can now be verified in iOS 9 via the Battery section in Settings.
  • Reply 38 of 236
    imatimat Posts: 208member
    Quote:


     Except for Facebook App, which runs all the time in the background.  Kill that all the time




    Or uninstall it and get a life.

  • Reply 39 of 236

    This article is stupid.  I wasted more time reading and commenting on it than I've ever used force-quitting apps on my phone.

     

    There are many apps that I've found to shorten battery life in the background, including the heavyweight champ of battery use, Waze (although the new update is better).

     

    Force-quitting requires zero effort, reduces clutter when switching apps, and is a good safeguard against unexpected battery depletion.  That sounds like all benefit to me.

  • Reply 40 of 236
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by slickdealer View Post

     

     

    Which can be disabled.

     

    I agree with the article if you properly manage your "Background App Refresh" settings.  

     

    Disable location tracking in the background for almost every app.  Disable background app refresh all together for apps you use sparingly - such as a wallpaper app.   

     

    If Background App Refresh is enabled only for apps you want, you can stop force closing apps forever.  




    That's not always an option, for example Google Maps or Waze must have the GPS running in the background. So I just quit the apps that I'm not using so that my App Switcher won't be riddled with apps.

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