I’ll admit it—I was a person who would close every app as soon as I was done using it. If I somehow missed it, I would make sure to swipe up on every card in the App Switcher right before sleeping. It felt productive. I used to think I was cleaning up my phone, so it could run better and save battery at the same time. After years of doing this ritual, I’ve learned that force-quitting isn’t doing any good for my phone. And I’m far from alone; many users still have a habit of swiping up every app that isn’t in use.
What does force-quitting an app actually do
A lot happens under the hood
When we force quit an app, most of us think that we’re simply shutting down something that we don’t need, just like we would do on a computer. However, modern smartphones don’t work that way. When you leave an app open on your iOS or Android phone, it’s not truly running in the background. Actually, it’s moved to a suspended state where it’s as good as a closed app. It stops using the CPU, barely touches the battery, or executes any code. It just sits in the RAM waiting to be resumed.
When you force-quit an app, it changes everything. It sends a signal to the OS to kill the process immediately and remove it from RAM. Now, that app has to cold-start the next time you want to use it. You can consider it the equivalent of shutting down and turning on your laptop rather than waking it from sleep every time you want to use it.
Both iOS and Android platforms are capable enough to handle memory and system resources themselves. Apple’s iOS uses a Jetsam process that manages memory usage and automatically closes the background processes that exceed their memory limits. This ensures your iPhone always has free RAM when needed.
On the other hand, the Android operating system uses a priority-based process manager that assigns a priority level to every opened app based on its current state. It uses a system component called Low Memory Killer to close low-priority apps before your phone’s performance starts to suffer.
The myths around force-quitting an app
Busting myths
One of the biggest and most common myths around force-quitting apps is that it saves battery life. Many iOS and Android users believe that closing every open app will make the battery last longer. However, it’s actually the opposite. Your smartphone can easily manage open applications without having you do anything. When you aren’t using an app, your smartphone moves it to a suspended state to prevent unnecessary resource consumption. When you force-quit and reopen an app, your smartphone uses more power and system resources to reload an application from scratch.
Some people also believe that closing apps also frees up RAM, which is extremely important to do manually. But that’s not the case. Modern iOS and Android phones are designed to manage RAM and free up resources when necessary.
A lot of users also close every app, thinking it will make their phones faster. In reality, it can be counterproductive. It’s much easier and faster for your smartphone to resume an app from its suspended state, rather than re-launching it every time for you. So, force quitting will slow down your smartphone, rather than speeding things up for you.
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Background App Refresh
Better alternatives
So, what are the alternatives to stopping background activity other than force-quitting apps? Well, there are some useful tips that can actually make your phone faster and save battery as well.
Your iPhone offers a Background App Refresh feature that lets an app continue running in the background even when you aren’t using it. While it’s a useful feature that allows your apps to sync data and fetch the most recent content for you, it also uses unnecessary battery and system resources. If you wish to save battery and want to make sure an app isn’t running in the background, you can disable the Background App Refresh for that app.
- Open Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh.
- You can disable this feature for all or specific apps on your smartphone.
While Android smartphones do not offer a dedicated Background App Refresh option, you can turn off background data to prevent an app from running in the background. Open Settings -> Network & Internet -> Data Usage -> Data saver and tap Unrestricted data access. From here, select Play Store and choose the app for which you want to turn off background data.
Besides this, it’s a great idea to restart your smartphone at regular intervals (once a week) and keep the Android/iOS software and downloaded apps up to date.
When you should and shouldn’t force-quit apps
The right moments and the wrong ones
Force-quitting apps on your phone isn’t useless, but you should know when to do it. Most people swipe away every open app because of their habit or obsession with keeping their phones clean. Apple and several Android smartphone makers recommend that a user should only force quit an app when it’s frozen, not responding, throwing glitches, or showing unusual behavior.
For instance, if your PUBG Mobile or Call of Duty game is stuck on a loading screen, you can close and relaunch the app. Sometimes, you may find that Instagram isn’t loading newer posts for you, or that WhatsApp is showing on the connecting screen for a long time, so quitting the app can be useful. You might sometimes notice that your phone gets warmer or the battery drains unexpectedly when you use a specific app. If that happens to be your case, resetting the app is one of the efficient ways to fix the issue. There’s no harm if you manually close apps in such situations. Furthermore, it’s reasonably safe to close your banking, medical, or other personal apps that contain sensitive information.
For everything else, just skip those swipes. Your smartphone is already handling the background apps and processes more efficiently than you ever could. Let your phone handle your open apps
Your phone can manage your apps better than you. Modern Android and iOS devices are designed to manage multiple applications, manage memory, and automatically close anything that’s not needed, way before your performance or battery takes a toll. You can consider force-quitting only for apps that are truly misbehaving on your smartphone. Otherwise, your swiping away is doing more harm than good. So, if you really want your smartphone to run smoothly, trust its management and avoid force-quitting. Your phone is already smart enough to know what to keep ready for you, what to close, and what to freeze.