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What apps do you have running all the time in your multitasking?
- Thread starter Trey1984
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I just leave everything running, I only ever kill something if the app is having a problem. It doesn't seem to affect my phone in any way.
I don't purposely keep anything running. If I open up the app tray, likely I'll kill everything. If I don't open the app tray, then likely, everything is running.
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Phone, Messages, Mail, iPod, Clock.
Others sometimes get left on for a while. I only kill apps after exiting a game. So if I haven't played a game on days, then there may be a lot more apps running in the background.
But I only trust the default, core apps to be running all the time.
Phone, Messages, Mail, iPod, Clock.
Others sometimes get left on for a while. I only kill apps after exiting a game. So if I haven't played a game on days, then there may be a lot more apps running in the background.
But I only trust the default, core apps to be running all the time.
People!
The apps "running" in the background take up ZERO CPU time. The memory they use is instantly available to the foreground app.
Background apps do not degrade the performance of your iPhone.
An app in the background is essentially frozen. It does not continue to run, it's archived and available for quick "re-foregrounding", if that's a word. The "multitasking" bar is really a "recently used apps that are quickly available and don't need to be relaunched and have saved their state at termination" bar. For some reason Apple prefers the former term rather than the latter.
There are some exceptions: an app can specifically request iOS to be allowed to: 1) continue to play audio; 2) continue to get GPS coordinates; 3) continue to receive phone calls; and 4) certain Apple apps can do whatever they want (like the timer in Clock).
So, sure, if you have an app that's continually getting and recording GPS coordinates, or playing Lady GaGa songs, by all means kill it. Otherwise, stop overthinking this and just chill.
The apps "running" in the background take up ZERO CPU time. The memory they use is instantly available to the foreground app.
Background apps do not degrade the performance of your iPhone.
An app in the background is essentially frozen. It does not continue to run, it's archived and available for quick "re-foregrounding", if that's a word. The "multitasking" bar is really a "recently used apps that are quickly available and don't need to be relaunched and have saved their state at termination" bar. For some reason Apple prefers the former term rather than the latter.
There are some exceptions: an app can specifically request iOS to be allowed to: 1) continue to play audio; 2) continue to get GPS coordinates; 3) continue to receive phone calls; and 4) certain Apple apps can do whatever they want (like the timer in Clock).
So, sure, if you have an app that's continually getting and recording GPS coordinates, or playing Lady GaGa songs, by all means kill it. Otherwise, stop overthinking this and just chill.
+1
I see no reason to close anything. If the OS needs more RAM, it'll take it from the least recently used app. I use my phone heavily all day long and I've never been in a battery critical situation. As far as I'm concerned, the OS functions brilliantly.
Mail, IM+, Messages, Skype, Facebook, & Twitter.
The two apps I will NEVER leave running are iTunes and applications. They make my phone extremely laggy.
The two apps I will NEVER leave running are iTunes and applications. They make my phone extremely laggy.
I never close anything but last week I started getting horrible battery drain where my phone was down at 94% 3 hours after coming off the charger and sitting doing nothing on my desk (*). I tried rebooting but it still drained at the same rate. I then killed all apps and it went back to normal.
I still never close anything (I'm a computer scientist so I know the principles of how Apple multitasking works) but I am now deeply suspicious of leaving the compass app in the quicklaunch bar because that is the only rarely-used app that I had on the bar when I was getting the battery drain. Compass is a location aware app, and it is an Apple built-in app so who knows what non-standard APIs it might use. I wonder whether it registers itself for some sort of regular location notifications and there's some sort of bug such that it doesn't close down GPS cleanly or keeps it active for too long on each occassion that it gets called. Anyway, after clearing out my taskbar and never using Compass since, my battery life seems to be back to normal.
So, my behaviour is leave everything "running" except for Compass.
- Julian
(*) For people who say I was imagining the battery drain and that 3 hours at 94% is good, I wasn't! I don't use my phone much and have no push or email at all. I just looked at my phone now and it has been off the charger for 22 hours and 59 minutes and is still at 99% charge, and that's with a couple of text messages and calling my voicemail twice; this is the sort of battery life that I'm used to getting. Mt 94% after 3 hours of no use whatsoever was definitely an issue.
I still never close anything (I'm a computer scientist so I know the principles of how Apple multitasking works) but I am now deeply suspicious of leaving the compass app in the quicklaunch bar because that is the only rarely-used app that I had on the bar when I was getting the battery drain. Compass is a location aware app, and it is an Apple built-in app so who knows what non-standard APIs it might use. I wonder whether it registers itself for some sort of regular location notifications and there's some sort of bug such that it doesn't close down GPS cleanly or keeps it active for too long on each occassion that it gets called. Anyway, after clearing out my taskbar and never using Compass since, my battery life seems to be back to normal.
So, my behaviour is leave everything "running" except for Compass.
- Julian
(*) For people who say I was imagining the battery drain and that 3 hours at 94% is good, I wasn't! I don't use my phone much and have no push or email at all. I just looked at my phone now and it has been off the charger for 22 hours and 59 minutes and is still at 99% charge, and that's with a couple of text messages and calling my voicemail twice; this is the sort of battery life that I'm used to getting. Mt 94% after 3 hours of no use whatsoever was definitely an issue.
I don't have the % turned on so I don't get so anal retentive about it. If I happen to double click the home button I'll usually kill everything, otherwise I just let it be.