The age-old debate of whether closing background apps on your iPhone actually improves battery life and boosts device performance continues to persist. Many iPhone users believe that force-quitting open applications is a beneficial practice. However, it’s time to dispel the myth and uncover the truth about managing background apps on your iPhone.
Closing iPhone Apps: A Routine Habit
Closing applications on your iPhone has become a common practice among users. The process is straightforward—swipe up from the bottom of the screen and hold briefly to access the open apps menu, then swipe up to close an app. While this gesture can be useful in certain situations, particularly when an app is misbehaving, it becomes a point of contention when it evolves into a daily routine of closing apps indiscriminately.
The Controversy: Does Closing Apps Save Battery and Enhance Performance?
A prevailing belief suggests that closing background apps can extend your iPhone’s battery life and optimize its overall speed. However, both experts and Apple itself assert that this practice may have unintended consequences, affecting your device’s performance negatively.
Closing Apps Consumes More Battery and Slows Down the System
Contrary to popular belief, force-quitting applications can lead to increased battery consumption and reduced performance. When you manually close an app, your iPhone expends extra energy on technical processes required to terminate running processes and free up memory. Upon reopening the app, the device must reload it from scratch, causing a performance drop and heightened power usage. Essentially, closing apps can be more taxing on your battery than leaving them running, as the system is engineered to efficiently manage resources.
Background Apps: The Reality
Background apps typically have a minimal impact on iPhone performance. When an app isn’t in the foreground, especially when your phone is locked, its background activities are significantly curtailed. According to iOS guidelines, background apps are restricted to specific tasks such as playing audio, receiving calls, requesting location data, or delivering notifications. Thus, when an app isn’t actively displayed on your iPhone, its influence on performance is negligible. Inactive background apps do not hinder device performance, and shutting them down is often unnecessary.
Alternative Strategies to Enhance Performance and Battery Life
Rather than routinely closing apps, there are more effective ways to optimize your iPhone’s efficiency. One such method is utilizing the Background Refresh feature, which permits apps to refresh content in the background. This feature operates intelligently, adjusting to user usage patterns and maintaining a balance between content updates and battery conservation.
To exert more control over background updates, navigate to Settings – General – Background Refresh. Here, you can toggle the feature off entirely or restrict it to WiFi connections. This allows you to prevent unnecessary app closures while enabling the system to manage background activities efficiently.
The Myth of Closing Background Apps
In conclusion, the habit of closing applications on your iPhone may be more detrimental than beneficial to your device. While it’s understandable that this practice is deeply ingrained in our iPhone usage patterns, it’s essential to understand why it should be reconsidered. Allowing your iPhone’s system to naturally manage background apps and resources is more advantageous for overall performance and battery life. It’s time to put the myth of background app-closing to rest and let your iPhone work efficiently.
