4 hours ago
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You wouldn’t want to trigger a battery app-ocalypse.
Closing open iPhone apps might seem like a surefire way to save juice, but this measure can actually have the opposite effect, according to Apple employees.
In a TikTok video with nearly one million views, a UK Apple customer said he had his “mind blown” after learning that this digital detox method can paradoxically drain one’s device.
“Every time you close your apps, it uses data and battery to open them up again,” the TikTok user — who goes by @fordylipsync — recalled in the clip. “How am I only just finding this out?”
The content creator said the topic came up while he was taking his device to the Apple store to have it repaired. “A kind man there fixed it – a technician guy, brilliant,” the man recalled. “I was closing all my apps down, he went ‘don’t close your apps.'”
When the TikTokker asked the employee why, the iPhone surgeon explained that it uses more “power” and “data” to open and close background apps than it does to leave them alone.
Instead, the technician recommended that he simply keep them suspended in the background, which simply freezes the applications in place like a power save mode.
The Brit said that this advice ran counter to what he’d heard from countless iPhone users, who urged him to always close his apps when not in use.
In fact, said Apple employee even said users can “leave hundreds” of apps open without an issue. “People think they’re doing stuff in the background, they’re not, they’re just sitting there. They freeze. Don’t close them,” exclaimed the social media user.
This advice might seem counterintuitive, but many tech-sperts have corroborated this little-known fact.
“Closing iPhone apps is both cathartic and instinctively feels like the right thing to do if your battery’s in the red,” wrote TechRadar contributor James Ide. “But it doesn’t actually help your battery life, RAM (random-access memory) or CPU (central processing unit), and opening and reopening apps could even have a negative impact.”
Ide added that “iOS has long been designed to make sure background apps barely touch your iPhone’s RAM or CPU.
He even cited Apple’s own guidance on closing apps, which states that “you should only close an app if it’s unresponsive.”
In 2016, Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior vice president of Software Engineering, dispelled the app closure myth while responding to an email query from a user, TechRadar reported.
The Apple fan inquired, “Do you quit your iOS multitasking apps frequently and is this necessary for battery life?”
Federighi replied, “No and no.”
English (US)