Apple Users seem to be unanimous that closing background apps is a good habit, but more likely a waste of time. For far too long, I’ve watched friends and family frantically swipe up from their iPhone’s multitasking screen to clear themselves of countless open background apps.
Maybe this mythical iPhone maintenance ritual will save battery, speed up your phone, or stop social networks from tracking you. While it’s not crazy to think so, it’s simply a lie we’re all living. Closing background apps doesn’t do anything because those apps aren’t actually “running”.
In 2016, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, confirmed that closing background apps does nothing for battery life, in response to a customer email shared with 9to5Mac. On a technical level, most of your background apps are essentially frozen, and your system just displays a screenshot of them for consistency. The impact on battery life is negligible.
The same can be said for Android. In fact, closing background apps they actually use more battery than if you just leave them open. This is because shutting down and initializing an app requires more energy than bringing it back from a suspended state in your “background”.
Federighi also notes that closing background apps doesn’t improve your phone’s performance, because it doesn’t affect the battery for many of the same reasons. By default, iOS manages your iPhone’s RAM as efficiently as possible, and closing background apps doesn’t optimize anything.
Regarding privacy, Force-closing apps doesn’t stop companies from tracking you, according to The Washington Post. Apps can still collect your data even if they are closed. Contrary to popular belief, apps can track you even if you force close them.
The key misunderstanding here is that force quitting an app is different from flipping “Background app refresh” off. Turning off “Background App Refresh” in settings is the safest way to solve all these problems.
The origin of the myth
This myth seems to have originated on community forums in the days following the release of the first iPhone. On July 5, 2007just a week after the release of the iPhone, a user posted about their Safari app running in the background on Apple’s community forum.
“When you click the home button after using Safari, does it still run in the background and drain your battery?” said the user.
“I’m pretty sure EVERYTHING is running in the background,” another user replied.
There were many other community forum posts about this same confusion at the time, including one very popular post on Stack Overflow. However, it is clear that this misconception occurred to many users from the very beginning.
Why is it ubiquitous?
This myth, like others, is pervasive because it seems like it should be true. On a computer, if there are too many tabs or applications open, it can run slower. That’s true, but the iPhone’s operating system is fundamentally different. Apps on your iPhone are meant to stay open permanently and can be called up at a moment’s notice at any time. Apple has never clarified this distinction.
Apple has never claimed that closing background apps improves your phone’s performance. The company is always keep quiet, you should only force close the app if it’s frozen.
Yet millions of people waste their days and their batteries closing their background apps. It’s one of the most widespread myths in technology, but we need to stop performing this iPhone cleaning ritual once and for all.