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Should you clear your open apps on your iPhone? No
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Despite the habit you might build and reinforce over the years, quitting your apps
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because you think it'll save battery life, speed up your phone, clear up memory
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is actually worse for your iPhone overall. You should only ever force quit an app
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if it crashes or stops responding. Here are three reasons why. Number one, quitting apps drains your battery
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and slows you down. Every time you force quit an app, your phone has to end all the processes
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associated with that app and it has to clear it from memory. And then when you open it again
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it has to load everything up from scratch, which slows you down. It may sound counterintuitive
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but you're actually better off just leaving it as it is. When you're done with your phone
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just go back to the home screen or lock it. It's that simple. If you make a habit out of it
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the battery power you waste by quitting your apps and waiting for them to open back up again
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will be far greater than the battery power it takes to just leave them silently in the background
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And your phone will clear apps from memory if it needs to. You don't need to do it yourself
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Number two, so what actually happens when an app is left open in the background
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It's basically as good as if it was closed entirely because there's very little
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that an app is allowed to do in the background if it isn't on screen or if your phone is locked
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without the need to force quit it. In fact, here's a complete list
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of everything apps are allowed to do in the background. They can stream audio like music, podcasts
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or background videos. They can receive or make phone calls, ask for your location, send you notifications
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or finish a task that you just started like uploading a photo or making a post
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In fact, this is so long ago that the examples they used during the introduction
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were Pandora, Skype, and TomTom. And over the years, they've added a few more features
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Now apps can run live activities, talk to Bluetooth devices, record your screen
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run a Siri shortcut, and manage a network VPN. But again, you will always be aware
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if these things are happening. If an app isn't on screen or doing one of these things
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it's doing nothing in the background. It doesn't take any battery life
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It doesn't slow your phone down. Number three, I will concede there is one exception to that rule
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and that is a feature called background app refresh. Every few hours, your phone will let an app
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in the background update for new content. So that it's there as soon as you open it
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But again, this is a feature that doesn't take that much battery power
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and it speeds up your phone because as soon as you open a new app
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you don't have to wait for a spinner. You'll instantly see the new content you're looking for
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But if it really bothers you, there is a single switch you can use
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to turn it off entirely. That is in settings, general, background app refresh
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background app refresh again, and then you can just turn it to Wi-Fi only
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if you're concerned about battery life, or just turn it off entirely. But again, I encourage you to leave it on
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because your phone is really smart about how best to preserve your battery life
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I would only disable it for the worst possible offenders, Amazon, Instagram, Snapchat
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and leave it on for the rest. Now I know it can be hard to undo
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years and years of muscle memory if you just do it automatically without thinking about it
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but I encourage you to try and retrain yourself. Just go to the home screen and hit the button
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If you learned something from this video, remember to like and subscribe. I'm Degriffin Jones with Cult of Mech
