It’s good to know how to close apps on iPhone for those times when an app crashes or stops responding. It’s really easy — just swipe up to see running apps and swipe up again to close them.
Does this mean you should close open apps? No, not at all. Despite what you may have heard, quitting apps on iOS makes things worse, not better. It’s a myth that closing apps will extend battery life, speed up your iPhone, or free up memory. All in all, it makes things worse.
Here are three reasons why.
How to close open apps on iPhone
GIF: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
To close open apps on iPhone, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and hold for a moment to bring up the app switcher. (Or, on an older iPhone, double-tap the Home button.) Swipe up on any app to close it.
If the app you’re using stops responding or has bugs, this will reset it and possibly fix the problem.
Unfortunately, many people seem to have a bad habit of force-closing all open apps on their iPhones every time they use them. You might start doing this thinking you’re saving battery or improving your iPhone’s performance, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Do it enough, though, and it becomes a habit. But here are three reasons why you shouldn’t — and why ditching iOS apps does more harm than good.
You can click here for the video if you want to watch it instead:
1. Closing apps drains your iPhone’s battery and slows it down
It may sound counterintuitive, but it’s better for your battery to just leave apps as they are. Just go back to the home screen or lock your phone.
When you force close an app, your iPhone has to work extra hard to finish all running processes and clear everything from its memory. When you open the app again, the phone has to load it from scratch, which slows you down.
If you get into the habit of doing this, the battery power you use by quitting apps and waiting for them to reopen will be far greater than the battery power needed to leave apps in the background.
Your phone will clear apps from memory on its own if it needs to — you don’t have to do it yourself.
2. Your apps aren’t doing anything in the background anyway
Photo: Apple
So what actually happens when you leave an app running? If the app is not on the screen, especially if your iPhone is locked, the app is allowed to do very little. It’s as good as being completely closed, without having to force it shut.
There are only a few things that iOS allows an app to do in the background, as former Apple CEO Scott Forstall explained when multitasking was introduced on the iPhone:
- Audio streaming/playback (music, podcasts, video)
- Receive or make phone calls
- Request your location
- Send notifications
- Finish the task you just started, like uploading a photo or posting
Pandora, Skype and TomTom have been hailed as the best apps of the day to be early adopters of these features — that was way back when (2010!). A few more background features have been added in the years since, but again, none of this will happen without your knowledge:
- Start live activities
- Talk to Bluetooth/NFC devices
- Record your screen
- Start the shortcut action
- Start VPN
Basically, if the app isn’t on your iPhone’s screen, it doesn’t do anything. It’s just waiting for you to open it again.
3. There is a better way to stop background activity
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Later, Apple introduced a feature that allows applications to update content in the background, the so-called Background app refresh. Your phone judges which apps are allowed based on your usage.
If really important for you, you have one switch you can use to prevent apps from refreshing themselves in the background. Turn it off Settings > General > Background App Refresh and reduce it to Wi-Fi or turn it off completely.
Once you do that, you can stop deleting your apps because nothing will happen in the background without your knowledge.
Even so, Background App Refresh is really smart when it comes to conserving battery. I would only selectively disable it for the apps that are the biggest offenders: Amazon, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
I know it’s hard to change habits
Once you learn how to close apps on iPhone, you might mistakenly think that it’s good for your phone to do this all the time. This is not the case.
Force-closing apps doesn’t save battery or speed up your phone — it actually drains your battery and slows it down.
Just swipe to the home screen and don’t worry about it.