iPhone users told to stop swiping apps closed as it’s ruining your phone – but cry ‘you monsters’ after finding out why
APPLE fans have been urged to stop “quitting” their apps constantly.
If you’re always swiping them closed in your iPhone’s app drawer, you’re making a big mistake.
It’s a widespread belief that you should force-quit apps by swiping them closed.
The idea is that this improves battery life and performance, but it’s a total myth.
In fact, Apple recommends only quitting an app in extreme circumstances – and said there’s no battery benefit to closing all of your apps.
A Reddit thread asked whether it’s worth closing apps to boost performance, and iPhone owners were strongly advised against it.
“You don’t need to do that. You don’t even need to do that on Android,” warned one user.
Another explained: “Many people have the mistaken impression that manually force quitting iOS apps is a good thing to do.
“But in reality force quitting apps makes the device work harder and use more battery the next time those apps are used.
“The OS manages apps in a much more efficient manner than you can.
“The only reason you should be thinking about force quitting apps is if you are troubleshooting a problem.”
When an app isn’t being used, it typically goes into one of several background states.
These suspended states are designed not to draw significant amounts of power to preserve performance and battery life.
However, if you force-quit apps, your iPhone has to work harder to fully re-launch them next time.
A popular 2022 TikTok video by @carterpcs also urged users to stop swiping apps closed, and racked up over 212,000 likes.
Apple itself has urged users to only force-quit apps if they’re unresponsive or behaving in a faulty way.
“If an app won’t respond or seems frozen, you can close it, then open it again,” Apple explained.
“You should close an app only if it’s unresponsive.”
A separate page notes: “Typically, there’s no reason to quit an app; quitting it doesn’t save battery power, for example.”
But some iPhone owners may find it hard to break the habit.
One aggrieved Apple fan wrote: “You monsters just leave all your apps open at all times???????”
Another said: “My husband can’t handle it and he closes everything after he’s done using it. It drives him nuts when he sees how many apps are open and it drives me nuts when he closes them for me lol.”
And one added: “I’m not trying to gain any advantage and not thinking about the battery, I just can’t stand the visual chaos.”