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JustSomebody12

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 16, 2020
359
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I think the global setting under App Background Refresh which enables only “Off”, “WiFi only”, and “WiFi and Cellular” is kind of outdated, it could be more useful if it discriminated also upon the charger (and battery) status.
 
To be honest I’ve never known it to do anything different when enabled vs disabled.
+1
The apps still reload if you launch them again
If I can’t speak about all apps, but about WA, which is the main IM app around the world, the difference is that it doesn’t update the contact list when it’s closed (which matters little to me), and doesn’t back-up to iCloud (which can be a tiny nuisance).
 
You can create a shortcut to activate when you plug in a charger or failing this one in accessibility that activates when you say a keyword.
 
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To be honest I’ve never known it to do anything different when enabled vs disabled.
+1
The apps still reload if you launch them again

It's not supposed to prevent apps from "reloading" when you launch them. As per Apple:
After you switch to a different app, some apps run for a short period of time before they're set to a suspended state. Apps that are in a suspended state aren’t actively in use, open, or taking up system resources. With Background App Refresh, suspended apps can check for updates and new content.
It's designed to allow suspended ("frozen") apps to periodically refresh some of its data. If an app has entered a suspended state, it's still going to appear to launch as if it had been fully closed, but background data will have updated so some content will be available faster than a cold start.

YouTube uses BAR to keep subscriptions updated even when suspended. I can not use YouTube on my phone for hours which it then goes into a suspended state, then swap back to it, and while I do still get the little splash screen, stuff like my recommendations and my subscriptions tab are already updated to the most recent content without needing to refresh myself. With BAR disabled, that doesn't always happen (particularly with my subscriptions).

That being said, there's pretty much *no* indication to the user what kind of data an app is going to refresh with BAR, if they're going to refresh any at all, unless the developer specifically tells you what its for. So, I just keep it enabled for my most used apps and anything that I know needs background processing (like Lyft). I disable it for everything else and for apps I know I don't need anything done in the background (like, why do I need BAR for Disney+ or Hulu?).
 
the background refresh app is confusing on ios.. for example, try disabling whatsapp or facebook messenger background refresh... u can still get notifications for it, so i dont really know what it does..

i hope ios have setting like android where u can completely disable an app to run in background.. will be even better if theres a setting that allow the app to bypass it when charging
 
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the background refresh app is confusing on ios.. for example, try disabling whatsapp or facebook messenger background refresh... u can still get notifications for it, so i dont really know what it does..

i hope ios have setting like android where u can completely disable an app to run in background.. will be even better if theres a setting that allow the app to bypass it when charging
That’s because notifications are essentially handled by the OS itself (that’s why you can get them sometimes even while the app is getting updated).
 
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