That is great advice, but…
My I-phone 6+ (I know I should upgrade) still has its original battery and I keep it on a charger most of the day to keep the power on, somit would make sense not to needlessly put an extra load on the battery but…
messages has the nasty habit to show a new message but when I want to open it, it does not appear in the list. I have to power down the device, restart and then I can go to messages to read the new one. It is a pain since the notification on the screen only shows the first few words and then I have to waste a few minutes to be able to read the actual message.
Of course, being retired I actually do have a few extra minutes but it irks me to have to do that. An I-phone should not have to be rebooted once a day (or twice) to read a message!
But sometimes, it’s just easier to force-quit the app. For example, suppose you are using a mapping app for navigation. While traveling, you occasionally are using other apps to chat, listen to a podcast, look up stuff, etc. Every so often you bounce back to the mapping app to check your progress. However, when you reach your destination, you no longer want that mapping app to be tracking your location (but you still want other apps to have access to your location. It’s a lot easier to swipe up, look for the mapping app, and bat it away than to navigate through preference to turn off location services for that app.
Ever since the iPhone 1, I’ve quit apps that I didn’t need to use for awhile; I have maybe 5 apps running all the time. Since iOS 7 I’ve always used the “swipe away” action to quit apps as I’ve been unable to find a way to do it any other way. If the “swipe away” is wrong, what is the correct way to quit an app?
As for the anecdotal loss of battery usage, I used to shut down my iDevices overnight and charge them about every other day. However since Apple has completely disabled the ability to download, install, and manage iOS apps via my iMac, I now have to leave them running overnight for the several hours it takes to download app updates via WiFi; of course the iDevices are now plugged in the charger for several hours every day to allow this. Apple has screwed up an easy, faster, and elegant way to install and manage iOS apps.
You don’t have OCD do you? I want the stuff I am not using gone. I need it gone.
Hope Adam Engst and TibBITS (and others) realize the topic is about behavior; not about a new solution to technical problems.
I think, Adam, you nailed it in the beginning when you referred to some people’s “odd behavior.” That’s all it is: odd. The criteria for making it “wrong” is all so subjective and cherry picked.
Some of us old-timers get weary of hearing all the “shoulds” users come up with. In most instances, users are general users - we didn’t develop the software, we are just learning on-the-fly, by trial and error. And also, everyone has a different level-of-comfort zone, or privacy sense, or tidiness, etc. That’s why we shut them down - “force quit,” as you call it.
There are no general-interest computer magazines talking about best-practice protocols any more (but thank gods for TidBITS and the books it produces), the so-called Genius Bars are not what they used to be, the classes offered online or in stores have questionable qualifications. And most of us are relying on our work neighbors or the ad copy to teach us what’s new to do (ad copy being written by people with sales on their minds; as bad as instruction manuals being written by tech writers). Let’s get off our high (hobby) horse, okay?
I thought this article in question might be talking about something new, an issue having been resolved, but no, it’s more of the same anecdotal, “what everyone else is doing is odd, why can’t they be more like me?”
Perhaps the App-Switcher should be named something else. If the correct behavior is to never force quit an app, you rightly state that it is a poor way to switch apps. If one does use the App-Switcher to switch apps, it makes sense to force quit some apps so the list is manageable.
My daughter taught me about swiping up to save battery life years ago but lately it doesn’t seem to make a difference on iPhone 6.
What is noticeable is IHeartRadio when I’m done with it but don’t swipe up my battery drains noticeably.
Does IHeartRadio constantly search when not in use, even with app refresh turned off?
I found I’ve had to restart iOS to make the battery % show the correct amount after it gets “drained” due to cold weather. I keep my phone in an outside coat pocket, and when it’s really cold, the battery % drops as is expected. However, after I’m back inside, and the phone has had a chance to warm up (~ 1/2 hr to 1 hr), I find the battery level stays the same as it was when I first came inside. It is only after I restart the phone that the battery % recovers to its “normal” level.
There a contradiction here. On one hand you say that recently used application still draw some power (to make sure they are ready and up to date when you use them again). On the other hand you say that applications that have not been used for a while will still draw a lot of power when used again, even if you did not shut them down.
Bottom line is: Unless you plan to use an application right away - shutting it down may save the battery power it uses in the background. So where is the tipping point? How long should I allow an application to remain open, and at which point will re-using an open application draw the same power as launching it? If I have no plan to use that application in the near term - shutting it down immediately after use will save the power it may use in the background.
Sadly I too must Force quit many many many times to restore a sliver (just a bit more) of functionality to iPhone 11, iPad 6 & TV4K. Did I mention many times?
Weather apps on the AppleTV 4K box will not function more than a few hours after first launching an app without restarting AND force quitting apps.
Mac OS Catalina (iMac 2019 4K) will Kernal panic if more than a few apps are running and something like a Photo’s image needs a name or crop and then poof… Panic or at best the clock stops and the Mac becomes an expensive room heater for 20 minutes. However if I restart and run one and only one app it will be fine. Same as the iPhone 11, just a few apps and things are golden, every time.
Everything is new and up-to-date, battery life is the last thing to consider - actually is does not matter at all. If the Tv, phone, Mac do not function then the battery does not matter at all. Frankly the battery life is so short as it is and if I miss out on an hour or two who cares, I would rather have a functioning device.
Since Catalina I need to force quit everything, restart, charge, pamper & pray that my other phone will back up or download photos. I think perhaps Apple or popular opinion suggests that all would be fine if a Force Quit was never necessary. This has been proven wrong by myself and pretty much anyone that has ever expressed out loud the pain and suffering with the iOS, MacOS & TVOS. It seldom comes up in conversation but when it does, it’s a blood pressure raising session.
I have noticed random folks who simply want to chat about the weather are fully prepared to force quit and restart their phone to continue afterward with weather conversation. Sad that it has come to that! Often the conversation comes to the opinion that you must first force-quit THEN restart in that order simply because the offending apps are still “in the app switcher / dismisser”.
There has to be a better way. Reflecting on what could be a cause (by observation) is perhaps the quantity of data necessary to continue with partial functionality of a particular app. Thinking out loud, at home I have >100MB data throughput however out-and-about may not be what @ home WiFi allows, force-quitting maybe stalling data & saving hair pulling by design?
I agree as some have said “odd behaviour” yet perhaps a certain collection of apps and area based and used or written that dictates the odd behaviour, a learned behaviour certainly. The Canadian Weather apps (read °C) are likely poorly written and related data sources combine to bring our battery powered stuff to their virtual knees.
To reiterate, if I can see the near future weather, turn on the lights, get music & view photo’s without force-quitting or restarting I’m all for it - in the interim I too am one of those that must bring my stuff back to life at the expense of battery life then so be it. A crazy thought (for the Apple lunch room suggestion box) - if an app has been in the background for many days perhaps it should Self Quit, surely it would be saving a few clock cycles and a gram (ounce) or two of battery power at the same time?
The power used by a few to stay up-to-date over time is minuscule for most apps, compared with what it takes to re-launch them. If that concerns you about a specific app, just turn off background refresh and / or location in your settings, as several have said before.
How minuscule is it? Is it worth two seconds of battery life? Two minutes? Two hours?
In absence of tools or other indicators that show how much battery power is actually consumed by an “idling” app, how much power is consumed when launching an app and how much power is used when re-using an app that had been idle for a long period (how long is “long”, btw?) - this is left for my uneducated judgement. My judgement may be wrong, but when the only source of information is a statement made by a manufacturer that does not bother with providing tools to support it - I would not call turning off those apps “a bad habit”.
Settings->Battery lists Battery Usage by App.
That #$%#@ list now tells me I’m spending way too much time of WhatsApp and Facebook…
That is interesting information, though I am not sure I got the hang of how memory is occupied, should be freed or not.
I take it from this article that the list of recently used iOS - apps can be as long you like with eventually showing every app on your iOS device that you have installed and without the performance of the device being hampered in any way. Correct?
Switching over to macOS:
Is this fundamentaly different? I guess it must be. My iMac has 32GB RAM and according to cleanMyMac most of the time only a small handful of GB remain available. I just clicked “release” and now it’s gone up to 18GB. Is this a meaningful procedure at all?
I agree people shouldn’t force quit apps on iOS, but this isn’t true. The signal is sent immediately, and the app is terminated immediately.
Ever since Mavericks, memory management was made to work in a similar manner to iOS. That is, the system attempts to keep RAM as full as possible to avoid having to fetch code or date from a drive. That’s more important with hard drives, but still saves time with SSD’s today. When additional RAM is needed, macOS will compress RAM data and if it that’s insufficient it will offload application cache first, followed by system cache. Using CleanMyMac force the system to release it’s cache, just defeats memory managements efforts to avoid having to retrieve it and shortly after you do that you’ll almost certainly find that RAM is full again, as designed, except it took extra time and shortened drive life in the process.
Read the documentation in https://support.apple.com/HT201464#memory about Memory Pressure for guidance on whether or not you need to invest in additional RAM.
So as I understand, I should leave my iPad on all the time and only restart it when needed. (I confess, have been shutting down when not using it.) How often should I be recharging it?
Here’s a good reason to force quit an iOS app: I use AirPlay to mirror my Peloton app to my Apple TV. But later, when I’m done, it screws up the regular Apple TV menu in weird ways. It’s like the mirroring doesn’t quite let go all the way. The only solution I have found is to force quit the Peloton app after I use it.
I force quite apps for 2 reasons: First, some of the games I use accumulate virtual crud (I assume temporary files that aren’t being deleted), and slow to a crawl if I don’t periodically quit and restart them. (That follows under your “problem solving” category.) Second, I find that the gradual accumulation of windows in the app switcher view makes it hard to find the application I’m looking for. Sure, I could go to the “desktop” and find the app icons, but I like the app switcher view. To me, periodically force-quitting apps that I’m not using saves time in the long run. (That follows under your “time waster” point.)