If you’re like me, then you’ve probably thought that force quitting apps on your iPhone or iPad (by tapping the home button twice and swiping up) would make your phone run faster and save your battery.
Well, turns out that tip — which I’ve been following religiously since then — is absolutely wrong. And in fact, it’s eating up your battery.
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When you double-click the home button, you’re actually accessing a navigation tool that’s there to help you find apps you have recently used. These apps aren’t running in the background; they’re in standby mode. And relaunching an app that’s in standby mode (by tapping it on the home screen or in the navigation panel) uses less battery power than force quitting and relaunching it.
There’s absolutely no need to swipe up to force quit when you’re done, unless the app is actually misbehaving. Or, if you want to “clear your history” and ensure no one sees you’ve been playing Candy Crush when you said you were reading a book. But, who does that? Heh.
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Unfortunately you’ve been misinformed. There isn’t an ‘absolute’ rule here, really. I suppose this may hold true for some apps under some circumstances, especially if you are force quitting and relaunching the same app 30x a day, and that app is maybe a game that has to load a ton of graphics into memory and authenticate a user over a network and load leaderboard data and today’s dumb prize, etc. But there are apps out there that do not enter standby when in the background, otherwise Waze would not be able to monitor your GPS location and warn you about a vehicle stopped on the road, nor SiriusXM stream audio in the background.
While technically inaccurate, the point is not entirely off base. Generally speaking most apps can run safely in the background without consuming a noticeable amount of battery life, but not all apps are built the same. As much as I love Stronglifts 5×5 for tracking my workout, I always know when I’ve left it running in the background when the next day a third of my battery is gone by the afternoon, and I’ve barely used my phone. While I don’t believe this is common, Stronglifts is not alone in this.
Jacob, good point! I did a ton of research on this one, because I didn’t believe it either, and most everyone agrees that the force-quitting to preserve battery power is a myth. Also, most agree that almost all apps go to standby within 5 seconds. A few apps are exceptions — aren’t there always? And yeah, Waze is a killer if you allow it to keep tracking you in the background.