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

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  • Reply 141 of 236
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post





    FB was abusing the system to stay awake. It's worth looking at the battery usage stats.



    A version of FB may have been doing that, but I have not had any issues, so it could be limited to a certain release that maybe I did not update to, or to certain circumstances.

     

    But that is not an excuse to habitually kill apps / all apps to improve battery.  It is an example of killing a malfunctioning (against apple standards) app that needs to be fixed, which is a valid reason to kill that app.

  • Reply 142 of 236
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by avidmac View Post



    It must be a slow news day. Aside from presenting opinion as fact, Mr. Hughes warns readers they "shouldn't" make a habit of closing apps. With no compelling evidence that doing so causes any harm, the correct wording would be "needn't." Poor writing all around.



    As has been stated, killing apps can cause more battery use than not doing it, because app startup can be resource intensive, so you ARE better off not doing it "just because" in order to try and improve battery life.  Killing off specific abusive apps is exempted.

  • Reply 143 of 236
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post





    Of course it's not relaunching all those apps on an iPhone. We have 1G of memory, most of us.

    Yes. FB was always on even when background app refreshing was off. The OS kills apps that are in the background and consuming too much memory, they get a few warnings until they are kicked out. All you are seeing in that list is the order apps were launched or switched too.



    However there are ways to consume background services and never die. People are right about GPS services. They don't die. If the app is continually updating its location and getting GPS it's likely to be kept alive and using battery. The reason for this is so that turn by turn navigation services can tell you where you are while you are doing something else, like playing Apple Music.



    Audio apps have to be able to stay awake too. If a radio app is backgrounded its audio still plays. This is battery intensive. In both cases swiping up helps quit them. These apps will stay alive (regardless of the position in the list or even memory pressure unless it's really extreme I think. )



    So for simplicity sake you could say swiping up helps.



    Yes, a GPS app will be woken up (or remain running) for each change in GPS data and that can run battery down.  However, it won't be doing that, even if running, unless you have it turned on (or shouldn't be).  Meaning, you can run a GPS Turn by Turn app and unless you are actually in the middle of navigating using it, it won't be getting updates that fast and running down your battery.  And if you are navigating with it, you are using the app, and should expect it to be using resources. 



    Same with music apps.  A music app not currently playing something won't be running in the background even if the app was running when put into the background.  And music playing is not that intensive anyway.   I can start the Apple Music app, have it play on BT speakers in my workshop, and have it play a couple hours (screen black) and the battery has gone down a few percent (5% or something).  I did this a few days ago and was amazed at how little the battery went down with a few hours of music playing over BT.

     

    GPS apps and music apps that were "running" when put into the background, but to actively "doing their thing" (i.e. doing real time navigation, or playing a song) won't use resources in the background.  If the are "doing their thing" and providing real time navigation or playing a song, presumable you WANT them to and initiated the action.

     

    And you control it anyway through Settings and background processing and location services when in background settings.

  • Reply 144 of 236
    Finally, some folks who have actual data and experience...

    It's also worth noting that one of the biggest criticisms that Android advocates use to criticize iOS is that there really isn't any true "background" multitasking in iOS. And that is absolutely true. There isn't. Apple tightly controls what is done in iOS at all times *specifically* to maintain a good user experience.

    iOS allows some *tasks* (not entire apps) to happen in the background, and they happen differently based on the type of task. All of them are explicitly managed by the OS - not the app.

    Certain functionalities require activity in differing areas at different times. Previous comments mentioned most of them. For example, notifications. As of iOS 7 (I think?) the OS controls when notifications are given to apps - essentially waiting until the phone itself has to do something - then the OS bunches all the updates it expects to send to apps and does them all at once when the phone wakes up for something else.

    This way there is not the phone waking up over and over for each single one.
  • Reply 145 of 236
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    chadbag wrote: »

    Yes, a GPS app will be woken up (or remain running) for each change in GPS data and that can run battery down.  However, it won't be doing that, even if running, unless you have it turned on (or shouldn't be).  Meaning, you can run a GPS Turn by Turn app and unless you are actually in the middle of navigating using it, it won't be getting updates that fast and running down your battery.  And if you are navigating with it, you are using the app, and should expect it to be using resources. 


    Same with music apps.  A music app not currently playing something won't be running in the background even if the app was running when put into the background.  And music playing is not that intensive anyway.   I can start the Apple Music app, have it play on BT speakers in my workshop, and have it play a couple hours (screen black) and the battery has gone down a few percent (5% or something).  I did this a few days ago and was amazed at how little the battery went down with a few hours of music playing over BT.

    GPS apps and music apps that were "running" when put into the background, but to actively "doing their thing" (i.e. doing real time navigation, or playing a song) won't use resources in the background.  If the are "doing their thing" and providing real time navigation or playing a song, presumable you WANT them to and initiated the action.

    And you control it anyway through Settings and background processing and location services when in background settings.
    chadbag wrote: »

    A version of FB may have been doing that, but I have not had any issues, so it could be limited to a certain release that maybe I did not update to, or to certain circumstances.

    But that is not an excuse to habitually kill apps / all apps to improve battery.  It is an example of killing a malfunctioning (against apple standards) app that needs to be fixed, which is a valid reason to kill that app.

    You live in an ideal world my friend. I understand the theory here too, but some people were rubbished for saying their phone ran hot when they were running maps apps ( not that I think google or Apple maps are bad citizens. Others may be).

    Here's the FB story. In the battery usage settings page people clicked on the clock icon to see how much time was spent on screen and in the background in the last 24 hours. Some saw FB taking 24 hours in the background.

    They are clearly gimping something, or leaving some audio channel open. Either way closing FB would help battery life

    http://www.idigitaltimes.com/facebook-ios-9-app-killing-your-iphone-6s-battery-how-fix-fb-drain-482384

    https://medium.com/@mg/battery-life-load-times-and-actually-giving-a-shit-about-your-customers-c3738386bded
  • Reply 146 of 236
    solipsismysolipsismy Posts: 5,099member
    asdasd wrote: »
    Either way closing FB would help battery life.

    And that was after having done all the proactive measures to keep FB from running in the background when it shouldn't?
  • Reply 147 of 236
    jupiteronejupiterone Posts: 1,564member
    valkraider wrote: »
    You mean like this one?

    "Generally, there's no need to force an app to close unless it's unresponsive."

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

    Well I'll add my Facebook story to the pile. I can reproduce this at will 100% of the time. But first a little background. From the Home screen if you adjust the volume using the buttons, you see a "Ringer" icon and the volume slider go either up or down. If you are in an app that produces sound like Facebook or Music and you adjust the volume, you see a "Volume" icon. So "Ringer" is the volume control for sounds outside an app, like the sound when you lock your Home screen, get a text message or the sound of a your timer going off, things like that. The "Volume" is the volume control for sounds inside apps with sound. Generally, I keep my "Ringer" volume very high and my "Volume" volume very low. Now with that said, this is what happens when I use Facebook.

    1) Launch Facebook
    2) Watch a video
    3) Close Facebook (by hitting Home button)
    4) Lock the screen. (Gee, did that lock sound, sound a lot quieter?)
    5) Adjust the volume.

    Suddenly the "Ringer" volume is now the "Volume" volume. The only way to fix this is to force close (or whatever you want to call it) Facebook. Immediately the volume control on the Home screen goes back to "Ringer". Was Facebook unresponsive? No, it was working perfectly fine. But it does somehow misbehave and cause the two different volume controls to get mixed up. I've tried to reproduce this with other apps and cannot...only with playing a video inside Facebook.

    I also have Background App Refresh turned OFF for Facebook and I have Location set to "While Using". And I use Facebook on my phone maybe 3 times a day, for no longer than about 10 minutes each time. When I look at my battery usage, I have 12 items shown, most are 1%, some are 2% and "Home & Lock Screen" are at 4%. Then at the top of the list is Facebook at 35%.
  • Reply 148 of 236
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post



    AppleInsider needs to pull this article because there is no basis in fact for the claims made!!! It has been demonstrated again and again that there are apps out there that do in fact run in background in a way to have significant impact on battery life. Facebook is just one of these apps but possibly the worst example....Now one [should] do this after every single app launch, but a bit of monitored usage should highlight to the user those apps that do have an impact on battery life. Exit those apps regularly once identified. There is also plenty of evidence that too many apps in background / suspended does in fact cause performance problems...


    Dave

     

    The multitasking iOS model in the later versions has several 

     

    Quoting Apple's docs for iOS 9.x:

     

    Background Execution

     

    When the user is not actively using your app, the system moves it to the background state. For many apps, the background state is just a brief stop on the way to the app being suspended. Suspending apps is a way of improving battery life it also allows the system to devote important system resources to the new foreground app that has drawn the user’s attention.

    Most apps can move to the extended state easily enough but there are also legitimate reasons for apps to continue running in the background. A hiking app might want to track the user’s position over time so that it can display that course overlaid on top of a hiking map. An audio app might need to continue playing music over the lock screen. Other apps might want to download content in the background so that it can minimize the delay in presenting that content to the user. When you find it necessary to keep your app running in the background, iOS helps you do so efficiently and without draining system resources or the user’s battery. The techniques offered by iOS fall into three categories:


    • Apps that start a short task in the foreground can ask for time to finish that task when the app moves to the background. 


    • Apps that initiate downloads in the foreground can hand off management of those downloads to the system, thereby allowing the app to be suspended or terminated while the download continues.


    • Apps that need to run in the background to support specific types of tasks can declare their support for one or more background execution modes.


    Always try to avoid doing any background work unless doing so improves the overall user experience. An app might move to the background because the user launched a different app or because the user locked the device and is not using it right now. In both situations, the user is signaling that your app does not need to be doing any meaningful work right now. Continuing to run in such conditions will only drain the device’s battery and might lead the user to force quit your app altogether. So be mindful about the work you do in the background and avoid it when you can. "

     

     

    The bottom line is that apps that uses location services are typically a drain (including Maps, Find My Friends). Bluetooth enabled apps are another radio that is on as well as in the System having it set to scan for Wireless Networks is a suck on the battery (even if the iPhone is statically positioned). Any thing that requires Push data (e.g., Mail) or downloads/updates to user data or the Apple app AppStore that checks for updates.

     

    Unless you want to dig into the ipsw file for the app and look into the settings for the background model the easiest way is to test your iPhone with an app or 2 left open in the background. As mentioned in other comments you can always turn off Backgrounding altogether but that kills the functionality of a lot of apps. You can go look at the Battery consumption of all apps (as mentioned @nagromme) and see the background and foreground consumption.

     

    As in most things moderation in what you leave open and using community and Apple reports to inform you about what is OK and what is a pig will cost you.

  • Reply 149 of 236
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    solipsismy wrote: »
    And that was after having done all the proactive measures to keep FB from running in the background when it shouldn't?

    Apparently.
  • Reply 150 of 236
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    jupiterone wrote: »
    Well I'll add my Facebook story to the pile. I can reproduce this at will 100% of the time. But first a little background. From the Home screen if you adjust the volume using the buttons, you see a "Ringer" icon and the volume slider go either up or down. If you are in an app that produces sound like Facebook or Music and you adjust the volume, you see a "Volume" icon. So "Ringer" is the volume control for sounds outside an app, like the sound when you lock your Home screen, get a text message or the sound of a your timer going off, things like that. The "Volume" is the volume control for sounds inside apps with sound. Generally, I keep my "Ringer" volume very high and my "Volume" volume very low. Now with that said, this is what happens when I use Facebook.

    1) Launch Facebook
    2) Watch a video
    3) Close Facebook (by hitting Home button)
    4) Lock the screen. (Gee, did that lock sound, sound a lot quieter?)
    5) Adjust the volume.

    Suddenly the "Ringer" volume is now the "Volume" volume. The only way to fix this is to force close (or whatever you want to call it) Facebook. Immediately the volume control on the Home screen goes back to "Ringer". Was Facebook unresponsive? No, it was working perfectly fine. But it does somehow misbehave and cause the two different volume controls to get mixed up. I've tried to reproduce this with other apps and cannot...only with playing a video inside Facebook.

    I also have Background App Refresh turned OFF for Facebook and I have Location set to "While Using". And I use Facebook on my phone maybe 3 times a day, for no longer than about 10 minutes each time. When I look at my battery usage, I have 12 items shown, most are 1%, some are 2% and "Home & Lock Screen" are at 4%. Then at the top of the list is Facebook at 35%.

    That's excellent investigation.

    You are right about the volume/ringer thing. If you are playing a podcast or music in the background then hitting those buttons adjusts the volume not the ringer. So FB must be keeping open a silent audio channel.
  • Reply 151 of 236
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member

    Just checked  My FB shows 1%

     

    Maybe the difference is I tend to not run videos from FB on my phone.  Since it is only when you run a video or similar, it appears, it may be a bug in FB where they declare audio app category and don't reset that when the video ends.

  • Reply 152 of 236
    plovellplovell Posts: 824member

    The GPS issue has been thrashed to death so I'll let that be. But there's another, less common background battery hog.

     

    That's "Voice Memos". Obviously it has to run while you're recording - d'oh. But it continues to chew battery even when you stop. In my case, it took the battery from ~90% to zero in six or eight hours. While it was ASLEEP (having pressed the power button to put to sleep). That was with iOS 8 - I haven't tried that scenario yet with iOS 9.

     

    I just instinctively quit the app when I'm done recording.

  • Reply 153 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"


    TL:DR  The article is right for all properly coded apps.  Improperly coded apps -  not so much.

     

    Of course your primary sources are quoting 2 4 year old articles , because when it comes to apps, current developers aren't trying/doing-stupid-stuff to bypass controls.  The thing is iOS 9 now shows you the guilty culprits.  It's less empirical now, and proves the exceptions much more accurately.

     

    note:  from the article I quoted (written last week):  Update 10/15: In a statement provided to TechCrunch, Facebook confirmed they're aware of an issue causing battery draining for users, and they're working on a "fix". Facebook didn't provide any additional details on the nature of the issue.

     

    Not 'some users' or 'isolated cases.'   

     

    Bad App

    Bad, Bad App.

  • Reply 154 of 236

    Okay, Mark, we know it's you, go back to scheming now.

    Well he did say, and I quote: "I run Facebook." Boom. Guilty as charged. ;)
  • Reply 155 of 236
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post





    Well he did say, and I quote: "I run Facebook." Boom. Guilty as charged. image

     

    Ah, *FLASH*.  I got it

     

    (that was the light bulb going off)

  • Reply 156 of 236
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TheOtherGeoff View Post

     

    note:  from the article I quoted (written last week):  Update 10/15: In a statement provided to TechCrunch, Facebook confirmed they're aware of an issue causing battery draining for users, and they're working on a "fix". Facebook didn't provide any additional details on the nature of the issue.

     

    Not 'some users' or 'isolated cases.'   

     

    Bad App

    Bad, Bad App.


     

    Well, it is "some users" as my FB is not draining my battery.   It seems that it is draining battery for those users who watch videos inside the FB app on their phone, or similar other activities.    I tend not to do that sort of thing on my phone.  So it does not happen to me.    It seems it is limited to those users who do that sort of thing and that those are specific cases, and not a general problem for all users regardless of their FB activity.

  • Reply 157 of 236
    This is highly inaccurate.

    https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/TheAppLifeCycle/TheAppLifeCycle.html ---> App Termination.

    tl;dr: Killing apps manually forces them to terminate, while the system will only do so if they break some rule, or it has a need (memory or otherwise). Given the fact that a suspended (but not terminated) app can register for notifications, (think WhatsApp and message updates, or any location-enabled app), while the documentation clearly specifies that terminated apps do not receive notifications... this article and tip are wrong.

    Lesson is: check the documentation, rather than make educated guesses.
  • Reply 158 of 236
    haggarhaggar Posts: 1,568member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by broderik View Post

     

     

    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.

     


     

    If Apple wanted to make it really easy, the app switcher could somehow allow people to distinguish between recent apps and apps that are currently running so they don't try to swipe away every single app.

  • Reply 159 of 236
    larryjwlarryjw Posts: 1,031member
    If I want to swipe to find other apps I'm currently using, I don't want to swipe past all those dead apps I used a week ago.

    Kill them!
  • Reply 160 of 236
    jfc1138jfc1138 Posts: 3,090member

    Easy enough to check: look at battery within settings and select the clock button to display the time it's been running in front and in background with the % of battery consumed.

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