By Maxwell Zeff
Apple users seem unanimously convinced that closing background apps is a good habit, but it’s more likely a waste of time. For too long, I’ve watched friends and family orchestrate a frenzy of up-swipes from their iPhone’s multitasking screen to cleanse themselves of countless open background apps.
Perhaps this mythical ritual of iPhone maintenance will save battery, make your phone run faster, or stop social media companies from tracking you.
While it’s not crazy to think so, it’s simply a lie we’ve all been living. Closing background apps does nothing because those apps aren’t actually “running.”
In 2016, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, confirmed that closing your background apps does nothing for your battery life, in response to a customer’s email shared with 9to5Mac. On a technical level, most of your background apps are essentially frozen, and your system just displays a screenshot of them for consistency. The impact on your battery life is negligible.
The same can be said for Android as well. In fact, closing your background apps actually uses more battery than just leaving them open. That’s because shutting down and initializing an app requires more energy than restoring it from its suspended state in your “background.”
Federighi also notes that closing background apps does nothing to improve your phone’s performance, for many of the same reasons it doesn’t affect your battery. iOS manages your iPhone’s RAM as efficiently as possible by default, and closing your background apps does not optimize anything.
In terms of privacy, force-closing apps do nothing to stop companies from tracking you, according to The Washington Post. Apps can still collect your data even if they’re closed. Contrary to popular belief, apps can still track you even if you force quit them.
The key misunderstanding here is that force quitting an app is different from turning “Background App Refresh” off. Turning off “Background App Refresh” in your settings is the most surefire way to address all these problems.
