It can depend on the app though, in particular for those background processes related to VoIP, background music, navigation, etc.--closing those apps will stop them from doing something in the background if they are doing it when you don't want them to (assuming Background App Refresh is also disabled for them).
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Apple Reiterates: Force Quitting iOS Apps Doesn’t Help Battery Life
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I can't comment on battery life, but quitting background apps absolutely reduces safari tabs reloading (iPad 2).
Nope, absolutely not true on my device.
Nope, absolutely not true on my device.
If that didn't happen then at some point you simply wouldn't be able to launch any new app or open a new tab in Safari or do much of anything else new.
Sure, understood. Apple allows some specific processes to run in the background on a limited basis. As I pointed out, if you've asked Maps for directions and don't close the route, then that process will continue (though for how long, I don't know). This is a problem with Maps being not able to detect when you've arrived and gracefully closing your route. Probably other nav apps aren't much better at this.
Interesting exercise: Look at the "north arrow" icon on your home screen. It should be an outline (unfilled). Now open Maps. It turns solid. Close Maps. The arrow remains solid... for around 15 seconds. That is how long Maps runs the location background process when Maps is not the current app. This is iOS working the way it was designed to work.
Other background processes the user can't control at all, such as the ability of Mail to receive push notifications. For the most part users get no benefit from intervening in iOS control of background processes.
I guess you just have a different definition of "needs more memory". Sure, it frees up memory when the alternative is that the device would completely crash. I'm saying it doesn't free up memory when low memory causes consistent, obvious degradation in performance. Personally I consider that "needing more memory".
Right, that's more or less what I said, that for the most part there's not much use in it, aside from a few apps (generally outside of system services) that at times might be doing something in the background when the user might not want them to and could close them to stop that.
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Well, it's both essentially. It allocates enough memory to something that you are doing so that it would run as it should run, and if you switch to something else and it doesn't have enough memory to do what it needs to do it will allocate whatever memory is needed for it to run as it would any other time.
The only thing that makes your battery life stay strong is to never update to a new major number iOS version. There was a time when Apple OS updates didn't add heavy features nor bloat, but that era ended in SL and iOS 5. Everything released later than that was designed to "suggest" you to buy new hardware. This is how the Apple I was used to died.
iOS 9 seems to be about the same or better as far as battery for many people, and with additions like Low Power Mode, that can help a lot of people get even better battery life if they might want/need it. But that's somewhat unrelated to the whole part about closing apps and all that.
I don't force quit apps to save battery. I do it for one of a few reasons and occasionally other reasons:
1. An app isn't acting quite right and needs to restart
2. Clear my previous apps list
3. reset everything before restarting the phone
#2 & #3 annoy the crap out of me with iOS because Apple doesn't have a "Clear All" option like you find in Android. Sometimes I just want everything cleared off that list and, if it's been a while, that list could be dozens of apps long. Swiping one or two at a time is time consuming and annoying.
Just let me clear the list; even if it does NOTHING to improve the performance of the phone or it's apps. I just want to clear the whole dang list sometimes!!!!!
Another thing to ponder... Background Processes
Apps can run background processes and Apple has setup an infrastructure that is supposed to prevent these processes from misbehaving. However, iOS is not perfect and neither are all of it's apps. And therefore there will be the occasional app that may run a process that is caught up and causing issues with your iDevice.
These misbehaving apps may also be draining battery by using Location services, Bluetooth, Wifi, etc fequently during background-processes. Therefore both performance and battery life will improve if the app and it's processes are stopped. Though a phone restart may be required and, in the end, you didn't save battery right now. But stopping the misbehaving app may save you battery life later.
Of course, this is all theoretical, but it's easy to see why some may believe that there's more to it than Apple says.
1. An app isn't acting quite right and needs to restart
2. Clear my previous apps list
3. reset everything before restarting the phone
#2 & #3 annoy the crap out of me with iOS because Apple doesn't have a "Clear All" option like you find in Android. Sometimes I just want everything cleared off that list and, if it's been a while, that list could be dozens of apps long. Swiping one or two at a time is time consuming and annoying.
Just let me clear the list; even if it does NOTHING to improve the performance of the phone or it's apps. I just want to clear the whole dang list sometimes!!!!!
Another thing to ponder... Background Processes
Apps can run background processes and Apple has setup an infrastructure that is supposed to prevent these processes from misbehaving. However, iOS is not perfect and neither are all of it's apps. And therefore there will be the occasional app that may run a process that is caught up and causing issues with your iDevice.
These misbehaving apps may also be draining battery by using Location services, Bluetooth, Wifi, etc fequently during background-processes. Therefore both performance and battery life will improve if the app and it's processes are stopped. Though a phone restart may be required and, in the end, you didn't save battery right now. But stopping the misbehaving app may save you battery life later.
Of course, this is all theoretical, but it's easy to see why some may believe that there's more to it than Apple says.
People are so obsessed with Battery life - I'm still pleased that the batteries are lasting more than 2 hours. Here is my simple solution and personally, I am not inconvenienced with this practice. Charger in car, usb charger connected to my iMac and one charger on my nightstand - plug it in an charge it whenever possible. It really isn't that hard and hardly noticeable.
I personally can confirm that PRIOR to iOS 9 the Camera app (yes, Apple's standard iOS app) definitely used MUCH energy power running in the background! And it was pretty obvious why (you literally could see it)—because you could see the live image (always refreshing) of the viewfinder in the multitasking area. Looks pretty and interesting but doesn't serve too much if you ask me. When you knew that you won't make use of the camera app within five minutes or so it was better to kill it completely in my honest opinion & experience (I LOVE the iPhone's videocamera, there are about 3,000 recordings in my iCloud).
Since iOS 9 the situation is much better (all tested on my iPhone 6). But you don't have any more a live image of the viewfinder in the multitasking area. Now it's merely a "frozen" (and intentionally out of focus, it's an OS effect) image of the last pic you had when the app was running in the foreground. I can easily do without it.
Since iOS 9 the situation is much better (all tested on my iPhone 6). But you don't have any more a live image of the viewfinder in the multitasking area. Now it's merely a "frozen" (and intentionally out of focus, it's an OS effect) image of the last pic you had when the app was running in the foreground. I can easily do without it.
What about that app that was just removed from the store that used the silent audio feature. Didn't Apple just say that they don't like to see people use that because of the background battery usage. Yes it got removed, but it is proof that killing background apps such as these will help your battery life.
It would be great if Apple did something with Facebook. The app is clearly deliberately abuse background operations. There is no reason why Facebook should get any CPU time when not active (if I disabling background refresh/push notifications). The app is clearly doing something to keep them alive to track users. All I want to be able to read posts when I open the completely stop it when I exit.
It would be great if background operation (not just background refresh but all sorts of background operations) is a revokable permission in the iOS 10.
It would be great if background operation (not just background refresh but all sorts of background operations) is a revokable permission in the iOS 10.
I don't force quit apps to save battery. I do it for one of a few reasons and occasionally other reasons:
1. An app isn't acting quite right and needs to restart
2. Clear my previous apps list
3. reset everything before restarting the phone
#2 & #3 annoy the crap out of me with iOS because Apple doesn't have a "Clear All" option like you find in Android. Sometimes I just want everything cleared off that list and, if it's been a while, that list could be dozens of apps long. Swiping one or two at a time is time consuming and annoying.
Just let me clear the list; even if it does NOTHING to improve the performance of the phone or it's apps. I just want to clear the whole dang list sometimes!!!!!
Apple really needs to make their products more satisfactory to obsessional users who are annoyed by their own compulsion to waste their time with unnecessary tasks. Definitely. Not.
True. Apps have can ask for a little amount of grace time time to serialise state, finish downloads etc,. But it shouldn't be possible to consume hours of background time for no obvious reason. We know Fb used to play a silent sound to keep itself running in bg. I bet they must be using another tricks now otherwise there wouldnt be such a big difference between front and back cpu time.
http://sixcolors.com/post/2016/03/quick-tip-finding-apps-running-down-your-ios-devices-battery/ seems to have a fairly good write up about it all.
[doublepost=1457653924][/doublepost]Unless you have GPS based applications running (like TOUR) which is constantly checking it's location. These chew the battery to shreds "even whilst idling in the background". So once finished, I turn them off to save the battery. Real savings in battery life is noted. Other applications are just fine to leave on - that's a cosmetic issue.
It's been a long-standing belief in some circles that using the multitasking feature of iOS to force quit apps can help save an iPhone's battery life, or improve the speediness of the software when the smartphone becomes slow. Earlier in the week, an iPhone user decided to email Apple CEO Tim Cook to put the issue to bed once and for all, and instead got a reply from Craig Federighi, Apple's senior VP of Software Engineering (via 9to5Mac).
Asked specifically whether Cook quits apps to save battery and if it's truly "necessary for battery life," Federighi jumped in with a concise "no and no." Although far from an official condemnation of the force quit belief by Apple, it is the most the company has directly said about the myth in the six years since multitasking became available in iOS 4.
Image via 9to5Mac
The simplistic nature of swiping apps off of the multitasking landing pad, and subsequently "quitting" them, helped create a widespread belief that an iPhone's battery could be preserved for a little longer. But as many have pointed out over the years, doing so could in fact do the complete opposite: you could be shortening the battery life of your iPhone.
A few exceptions can be made to certain processes, but for the most part when an app is pushed into the background it becomes completely frozen and ceases to use any of an iPhone's battery power. As relayed by a former Genius Bar technician, Scotty Loveless, force quitting an app purges all of its code from the RAM of the iPhone, requiring it to be re-loaded upon the next time you visit the app.
If it's an app you're going to often -- a weather or traffic experience, for example -- all of the forced closing and re-opening actually can worsen the life of an iPhone. Exceptions can be made by toggling off a feature called "Background App Refresh," which the Facebook app was found to be suspiciously circumventing in recent months, but in all other occurrences the process of force quitting each app to prolong battery life is erroneous.
In the case of the Facebook app, the company's mobile app was discovered to be the cause behind cases of dramatic battery drain, even when Background App Refresh was turned completely off. The social network site eventually implemented a fix for the problem, citing the major culprits as "CPU spin" in the app's code and silent background audio continuing to emanate from the service's auto-play videos after the app was closed.
That was a rare case, however, and users should stick closer to Federighi's succinct advice today instead of continuing to put long-term strain on the smartphone. If you're ever really concerned about daily battery usage, Apple offers a simple but useful tool to keep on top of things. Go to Settings > Battery > and scroll down to Battery Usage. "Last 24 Hours" and "Last 7 Days" can give you a full picture at where the heaviest-hitting battery life apps are coming from.
You can also restrict specific app access to Background App Refresh -- or turn it off altogether, although that can drastically hinder certain apps' key features -- in Settings > General > Background App Refresh.
Article Link: Apple Reiterates: Force Quitting iOS Apps Doesn't Help Battery Life
I am skeptical of their advice for looking at Battery Settings to gage which apps might be using too much background processing. What you see is pretty much just a list of the apps you use the most. Mine is Phone. Well, duh, guess I need to start taking fewer calls. What they think we can really learn here, I'll be jiggered. Not a lot of news we can use here.
They are not left running in the background (unless they do nefarious things like playing silent audio like the Facebook app did for a while). They occasionally are woken up by the OS to allow for some background activity. You can prevent that by disabling background app refresh for them (or for all apps). Have you tried to disallow background app refresh for them?
My beef here is that people belief that what the relevant bodies (in the case of iOS that would be the people that wrote the code that is iOS) say is often a lie and only their own understanding based on their own experience is the relevant thing. Do you really think society has come as far as we are in terms of technology by not believing others? You don't go about and verify whether the result that your calculator gives you is correct. At some point you belief that if a calculator would give incorrect results, its millions of users would have found out by now. Why don't you belief that by default any app is put into the background is frozen (with the given exceptions)? Why would Apple say something like this if it weren't true? If it weren't true any app developer worth its salt would have found out by now.
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Any decent app that records GPS data should have an option to switch off GPS recording (or rather should only record GPS data once you explicitly start the recording of GPS data). And if the app shouldn't allow for this, why don't you save yourself the work of force-quitting them every single time you use them and instead just cut them off from using locations services when in the background (for apps that offer that option, some apps only allow you to choose between them never OR always using location services) or just cut them off from background app refresh?
If they only way to stop an app from recording GPS data is to force-quit it, it is a very poorly designed app.
That's the only place I want to use Facebook. Why the heck would I want to do it on a computer?
Facebook checking is for when I am stuck waiting somewhere. Facebook posting is for when I am doing something somewhere and want to share. Both of those are best suited for phones, since the phone is with me and the phone has my location and photos.
Heck, outside of work I almost never touch a computer anymore.
How often do people clear the 'Recent Items' entries in the Apple menu on the Mac?
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Yeah, killing an app that misbehaves is a good idea. Not using an app that misbehaves is an even better idea.
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Did it show up high in the list of of apps in the Battery section of the Settings?
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Do you also routinely clear the list of 'Recent Items' (under the Apple menu) on your Mac? Do you also routinely clear the list of recently open documents in all the applications you use? Do you want to cover your tracks so that nobody can see which apps you have recently used? Or does the list of recently used apps offend your sense of aesthetics?
Do you also routinely clear the history in your browser?Just let me clear the list; even if it does NOTHING to improve the performance of the phone or it's apps. I just want to clear the whole dang list sometimes!!!!!
Which is why you can prevent an app from using location services (or depending on the app to only allow it when the app is in the foreground) and why you can prevent them from using background app refresh. Where appropriate, you can also stop individual apps from using cellular data.
You can see the time split between actual usage and background usage as well, which can provide a good amount of useful information. So if an app you are not really using much is appearing as having used a fair bit amount of battery then certainly that can be an indicator of something, and looking at the time of actual usage vs. background usage can provide more insight into it as far as perhaps explaining it.