Most of us usually close iPhone apps by swiping them away from the center of our home screen. This is often based on the suspicion that force quitting apps definitely squeezes more juice out of the battery and improves performance. But should you even bother closing them?
Surprisingly, the answer is no. Apple’s own guidelines for closing apps say that “you should only close an app if it becomes unresponsive.” And there’s a good reason for that: iOS has long been designed to ensure that background apps barely touch your iPhone’s RAM or CPU.
A few years ago, Apple’s own Craig Federighi (Senior Vice President of Software Engineering) even weighed in on the topic to dispel this myth. Here’s what he had to say, plus a technical explanation so you can impress your iPhone-owning friends with your knowledge…
The Myth: Closing apps on your iPhone will extend battery life
Closing iPhone apps is both cathartic and instinctive as the right thing to do when your battery is in the red. But it doesn’t really help battery life, RAM, or CPU, and opening and reopening apps can actually have a negative impact.
Apple’s SVP of Engineering, Craig Federighi, even commented on this topic a few years ago. According to MacRumors In a 2016 report, a reader emailed Tim Cook directly for a final answer to the app shutdown question and Federighi claimed to have received a response.
The email asked, “Do you regularly quit your iOS multitasking apps and is this necessary for battery life?”. Craig’s response was short and to the point, saying “no and no,” before thanking the emailer for being an Apple customer.
While we didn’t see the email directly, MacRumors reported that the email’s headers had been verified. And Apple’s subsequent advice on closing apps has always supported this, with the main guide stating that “you should only close an app if it becomes unresponsive”.
Of course, iPhones have steadily received memory improvements since then, going from 128MB to 8GB of RAM. And modern apps are also more demanding than they were in 2016. But most background apps in iOS are simply suspended or frozen, freeing up the RAM they would otherwise use.
Why it doesn’t help
iOS is very efficient at suspending apps that are not in use; those apps are then essentially frozen in the background. The suspended apps don’t really affect your battery or performance. The fact that you can still see them when you swipe up from the bottom of your home screen is just a visual indication so you know they were recently open and are ready to resume when needed.
Although it feels counterintuitive, it’s often better for battery consumption to just leave the apps alone until you need them. This is because closing apps only to have to open them again later is often more battery-intensive than simply leaving them in the background.
The initial launch of most apps requires a short power surge to load and collect the app’s data. An app hanging in the background simply uses less power, although apps like Spotify, Apple Music or GPS navigation may continue to consume some power if they are still actively used in the background.
If you suspect an app is reducing your battery life, you can check by going to Settings > Battery and scrolling down to see ‘Battery usage by app’. To prevent an app from running in the background, you can also go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and disable the specific app.
A better way to keep your iPhone running smoothly is to simply uninstall unused apps and regularly delete or copy large files from your iPhone. While it’s undeniably satisfying to close apps, keep in mind that doing so is unlikely to help your iPhone’s battery life or performance (and may even have the opposite effect).