There's definitely no need to do it routinely or anything like that. But there can be a need or a benefit to do it sometimes for some apps that might be doing something in the background that the user doesn't want to be happening.
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Apple Reimbursing Customers Who Recently Purchased Now-Acquired App Workflow
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My point is, I've seen no evidence that you can actually stop a background process that is permitted by iOS by deleting its saved state, but I've certainly seen evidence that you can't. Further any background task that iOS does allow should be terminable in the app itself. However, it can be useful to delete the saved state of an app that is stuck. I've seen that a few times.
There's definitely scenarios where people have been dealing with various apps that way. Sometimes Facebook or WhatsApp or some mapping/navigation apps can do things in the background and people would close them out to stop that activity. Certainly something that has come up before in various discussions about this kind of thing and various apps (again, Facebook probably being one of the more famous/notorious ones in relation to that, at least for some people).
Waze was killing my battery life until I set it to not track my location when I wasn't using it. Deleting the saved state did not stop the background tracking, IIRC (I no longer use Waze so perhaps someone else can test this in the interest of science). I see a lot of discussion about this too but much of it is based on the wrongheaded idea that apps available in the app picker are "running" and can be "quit" by deleting their saved states in the picker.
Here's one: TWC TV. On older 1GB iPads, if you have a number of items in your task list it will frequently not work - launches and hangs or launches and closes. When you contact TWC (now Spectrum), they will tell you to close all tasks in the list and relaunch. It works.
Ipad Mini 4 running 10.3.1
Tasks: Word, Altitude, Forecast Bar, PolyMail, Mail, App Store, Camera, Safari.
Memory:1.9GB - Active 1.32GB, Wired, 266MB, Free 72MB, System 302MB
After Close: 1.9GB - Active 904MB, Wired 255MB, Free 556MB, System 238MB
Ipad Mini 3 running 10.2
Tasks: Settings, App Store, Google News, Mail, Safari, Kindle, Facebook
Memory:987MB - Active 328MB, Wired 164MB, Free 42MB, System 451MB
After Close:987MB - Active 256MB, Wired 161MB, Free 260MB, System 309MB
It is apparently doing something...
Have a problem with TWC TV and Heavy games on the iPad Mini 3 at times with a heavy task listing. Not on the 4.
Removing Waze from recent apps would have stopped its background location tracking as well (short of there being something weird going on with the device or something like that).
What this suggests is an ill-mannered app that isn't handling memory correctly, since iOS automatically releases memory used by suspended apps as needed by other apps. I didn't suggest manually deleting saved states does nothing; in fact, it does a very definite thing that is otherwise managed automatically by iOS.
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Are you sure, as in, you've tested this hypothesis? Waze (for one) has a specific app setting for toggling background location tracking on and off. It would not work as a user might expect if toggling it on meant it was only actually working when the app was in the recently-used list.
Without being actually used or in the background (as in being in the recent apps list) suspended or otherwise, unless Background App Refresh is enabled in general and for that app in particular, a closed app won't be able to run in some way (in the background or otherwise). This sort of thing came up in another discussion a little while back with https://developer.apple.com/library...ionAwarenessPG/CoreLocation/CoreLocation.html being referenced as providing the details about it.
Could be. Aside from TWC TV and some heavier games, I don't see much of an issue with other apps. Usually.
My iPhone I seldom see an issue however I don't run TWC TV and bigger games on it.
I'd already read most of this and noted that it does not refer to the recent apps list at all. In fact it says that even a "terminated" app (how this is defined I am not sure) is woken and placed in the background if it needs to receive a location service. It says, "iOS supports the delivery of location events to apps that are suspended or no longer running." Even without being totally certain of the distinction between "terminated" and "no longer running" (if any), it's pretty clear that apps are allowed to process events when as far as the user knows the app is inactive. The user does have the option of disabling background event handling either specifically for an app or globally but I find nothing to suggest that they can do it any other way.
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Apple doesn't make this as clear as they could to the user. This leads to a lot of speculation about how much control the user has over OS functions and how much they need to intervene to optimize performance. Apple's clear philosophy is "we took care of that, don't worry about it."
Right, with the user not allowing Background App refresh enabled for a particular app or in general then an app is only able to perform something if it's in foreground or background (suspended or not), but not if it's actually closed/terminated.
All this also only applies to this one particular location service aspect of it, while there are other ones related to VoIP, audio playback, and a few others that can allow apps to perform tasks in the background if they have been used at some point and are simply in background (suspended or otherwise), but not if they are completely closed (either haven't been launched or have been closed/terminated).
Basically that is to say that there are certainly circumstances where removing the app from the recent apps list to actually fully close/terminate it can have an effect of stopping it from doing something in the background which it otherwise might be doing.
"Note: If your app is terminated either by a user or by the system, the system doesn’t automatically restart your app when new location updates arrive. A user must explicitly relaunch your app before the delivery of location updates resumes. The only way to have your app relaunched automatically is to use region monitoring or the significant-change location service.
However, when a user disables the Background App Refresh setting either globally or specifically for your app, the system doesn’t relaunch your app for any location events, including significant-change or region monitoring events. Further, while Background App Refresh is off your app won’t receive significant-change or region monitoring events even when it's in the foreground. When a user reenables Background App Refresh for your app, Core Location restores all background services, including any previously registered regions."
Yes, this seems to be true, at least for some background services. I tried this with an audio streaming app. Dragging the app out of the picker terminated the audio playback. It did not resume when the app was reopened, though it did remember the place where the playback was interrupted.
