Stop closing background apps on iPhone

apple Users seem to agree that closing background apps is a good habit, but it’s more likely a waste of time. For a long time, I’ve been watching friends and family frantically swiping up on their iPhone’s multitasking screen to clear out the countless open background apps.

Maybe this mysterious iPhone maintenance ritual can save battery, make your phone run faster, or stop social media companies from tracking you. While it’s not crazy to think this way, it’s just the lie we’ve been living. Closing background apps does nothing because the apps are not actually “running”.

In 2016, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering) Confirm that closing background apps does nothing To save your battery life, reply to customer emails shared with 9to5Mac. On a technical level, most of your background apps are essentially frozen, and your system only displays screenshots of them for consistency. The impact on battery life is negligible.

The same is true for Android.In fact, close your background apps actually uses more battery than leaving them on. This is because closing and initializing an app requires more energy than resuming it from a suspended state in the “background.”

Federighi also points out that turning off background apps does nothing to improve your phone’s performance, and it won’t affect your battery for many of the same reasons. By default, iOS manages your iPhone’s RAM as efficiently as possible, and closing background apps won’t optimize anything.

In terms of privacy, Force closing an app doesn’t stop companies from tracking youAccording to the Washington Post. Even if the app is closed, they can still collect your data. Contrary to popular belief, apps can still track you even if you force-quit them.

The key misconception here is that force quitting an app is not the same as closing the app”Background program refresh“Leave. Turning off “Background App Refresh” in settings is the surest way to fix all these issues.

origin of myth

The myth appears to have originated in social forums days after the first iPhone was released.exist July 5, 2007Just a week after the iPhone was released, a user posted on Apple’s community forums about their Safari app running in the background.

“When you click the home button after using Safari, is it still running in the background and draining the battery?” said this user.

“I’m pretty sure everything is running in the background,” another user replied.

There were many other community forum posts at the time discussing the same confusion, including a very popular one stack overflow. However, it’s clear that many users had this misconception from the start.

why it is so common

This myth is as common as any other because it feels like it should be true. On your computer, having too many tabs or apps open can slow it down. That’s true, but the iPhone’s operating system is fundamentally different. Apps on your iPhone should always stay open and ready to call instantly. Apple has never made this difference explicit.

Apple has never claimed that closing background apps improves phone performance.The company has always To maintain quietly you should only force quit an app if it freezes.

But millions of people still waste time and battery by closing background apps. This is one of the most common misconceptions in tech, but we need to put a stop to this iPhone cleaning ritual once and for all.