John Gruber on forcing quitting apps to save battery:
The iOS system is designed so that none of the above justifications for force quitting are true. Apps in the background are effectively “frozen”, severely limiting what they can do in the background and freeing up the RAM they were using. iOS is really, really good at this. It is so good at this that unfreezing a frozen app takes up way less CPU (and energy) than relaunching an app that had been force quit. Not only does force quitting your apps not help, it actually hurts. Your battery life will be worse and it will take much longer to switch apps if you force quit apps in the background.
I see people doing this all the time, but they never believe me when I tell them it doesn’t do any good.
[breaks bottle, grabs barstool]
I do force quit from time to time, usually when an app starts acting wonky and I want to restart it and see if that fixes the problem. THere are also occasionally times when everything slows to a crawl, and force quitting a couple (not all) of the most recently used apps seems to bring the system back to normal.
But I have never done it to “save battery life” or any such nonsense.
I quit one app consistently, Waze. I like some of its features, but its been known to be a battery drainer in the past. Right after I use it, I double click and quit it. That’s it, everything else I leave alone.
Raises fist, grabs a steak knife and joins you.
I was in the Apple Store about a year ago, maybe a bit more. I had a problem with my iPad. The Genius Bar guy looked through my apps and started force quitting them. I said, “I thought you never needed to actually do that.” He said that some needed still caused problems. He specifically mentioned map apps, IIRC.
There is a purpose for force quitting. When an app is acting in a strange manner, and you want to restart the app fresh. Though a simple step back to the springboard then back into the app normally is something I try first before resorting to the force quit.
But otherwise, yeah, there’s no power or memory benefit to it.
Since when did one get qpps on the App Store? ???????
PS: Typo alert.
You can put Waze to sleep to prevent battery drain. It does admittedly feel faster to force-quit than pop open the menu and sleep it, though.
I’ve done both, it is faster to force quit, at least for me. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to it?
For me it’s Scrabble. The poor thing just loses it’s little brain regularly.
Must agree. New to iOS two years ago, amazed how parsimonious is it with memory and apps running. Could hardly believe how great the iOS is at conserving processor and memory both, actually automatically. Thanks for the notice, however, as I had forgotten just how much I love and often use iOS. No regrets anymore over the loss of my once-beloved Moto ‘Droid. ((sniff))
To clear your memory, hold the power button until the slider to turn off your device comes on screen.Then release the power button and hold down the home button for a few seconds. All unused memory will free up.
I’ve always found that map apps totally drain the battery, so I quit them when not using. The battery always drains much faster if they are running.
The way I explain it to people is that it’s like getting to a Stop sign, turning the car off to stop, then turning it back on to resume, thinking they’re using less fuel when really they’re using more fuel.
Then I show them my phone and how I’ve practically never force-quit an app on it (the shock on their face when they see the app carousel!), and how if I try to open an app from long ago it actually has to start from scratch instead of resuming.
In the context of diagnosing a problem, I could see where “clearing the decks” might be a step in the process.
Gruber’s article seems off target to me, or more like shooting at a straw man. In my circle, no force quits apps to “free up RAM”. The apps that I force quit are ones that I don’t fully trust on privacy issues and cellular data consumption. Primarily Waze, Google Maps, and Facebook. Google Maps at least allows you to limit location services usage to “while using” the app, but Waze only allows “never” and “always”, which I find a bit shifty.
Force quitting is great. It can save battery … it may not always or often. It is also great for apps that start to go, “sideways”. Use the Force!
unless said app is going sideways – or possible there is a bug in either the app or system.
On a separate topic, it would be nice to force location services to work the way they are supposed to …
Yup, I have 65 apps “open” right now.
sometimes it is best to kill all, then power off.
apps do go sideways …
yeah, having a setting to force location services to work correctly would be a very good option – even if not perfectly working with the app.
But…..force quitting apps is my fidget spinner!
source?
yeah people don’t get that it’s a recently-used list, not a list of omg-running-right-now list.
Gruber’s article isn’t about killing a messed up app, it’s about the myth that one should always kill all apps to save power.
nope. force quitting apps to save battery is like shutting off your car engine at red lights to save gas. pointless because the restarting consumers more.
unless you have a bad app with a background process such as music or GPS, routine killing of apps is counterproductive for the reasons stated. Craig knows best, he runs iOS.
On that score, absolutely. Sometimes you’ve gotta kill an app to save it 😉
There are certainly particular apps that can misbehave; this is more about the (very common) practice of force quitting every app in the task switcher.
I tend to be more prone to force quit apps that use GPS. Just to make sure they’re not still keeping GPS alive in the background and draining battery. I have no idea whether this is helpful.
Oh, I know, I am just adding a little info as to how sometimes it is necessary. Those that quit every app like that don’t know what they are doing. But when someone does force quit an app, there is sometimes a reason.
That was his explanation.