I have Background App Refresh turned off for all my apps, but the battery settings still show things having background activity. Why is that?
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Background activity with Background App Refresh turned off
- Thread starter iLoveMyApple
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Because when you put an app in background, it has a grace period during which it can finish it's activity. This is independant from background app refresh.
Also there are apps like Google Maps or Spotify that can run in background for navigation or music
Also there are apps like Google Maps or Spotify that can run in background for navigation or music
Background refresh is just one aspect of being able to run in the background. By default apps have some ability to run in the background at times for certain reasons, which isn't something controllable by the end user.
What about apps that don’t fall under any of those criteria but are still showing using background activity?
For instance, IMDb I have set to never use location, no notifications, and Background Refresh master switch is set to off. Yet, I always have IMDb show up as with background activity in my battery stats, usually with more background activity than on screen time. And no, I don’t have Bluetooth on and I’m not watching videos or anything. Drives me nuts since I cannot figure out why it does this.
All apps are allowed to at least finish some things for a little after you use them. So each time you use an app and leave it it can still do something in the background for up to around 10 minutes by default as I recall.
Okay, I just don’t see what IMDb would possibly be finishing in the background.
Now that is a good question that unfortunately would be hard to answer for us end users.
I was under the impression that some of us are developers and may have knowledge in this department.
Well, people can have general ideas of what an app could do in the background, but that might not really say much as far as what a particular application like IMDb would do and why it might need to do it.
That's a good idea. You might get a reply on this site, looks like an employee has answered a related question before: https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/background-refresh-option-not-shown-in-ios
Thanks! Interestingly the answer in that link pretty much answers my question. It’s clearing cached images from my device after closing it to save space.
Yeah but I did find it interesting that it takes so long (by your account). Could be more to it. But if you’re satisfied that’s cool
I was about to post a new question about this but the search function worked!
My example is with Google Hangouts. I have background app refresh turned off for it, yet the battery settings show 35 min on screen and 1.3 hrs background activity. This is alarming.
My example is with Google Hangouts. I have background app refresh turned off for it, yet the battery settings show 35 min on screen and 1.3 hrs background activity. This is alarming.
Apple naming Background App Refresh as such Is really confusing. Backgroubd App Refresh is not the same thing as background activity.
Background App Refresh only occurs when connected to WiFi and I believe connected to a power source. Background acivity is leaving apps in the app switcher that may had additional processes running.
Really a poor naming scheme.
Typically a reason why I never leave apps in my app switcher unless I’m going to be using that app again soon.
Background App Refresh only occurs when connected to WiFi and I believe connected to a power source. Background acivity is leaving apps in the app switcher that may had additional processes running.
Really a poor naming scheme.
Typically a reason why I never leave apps in my app switcher unless I’m going to be using that app again soon.
Unfortunately, my research into this showed that killing the app in the app switcher does not actually prevent it from using background activity. Just to make things more confusing and and convoluted. I’ll try to find an article that references this.
I close out all my apps regularly and I almost never have background activity listed in battery.
It’s kinda dense at times, but there’s a lot of good info here. https://developer.apple.com/library.../BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html
Specifically, apps using your location can relaunch after you have cleared it from the app switcher. At this point, the app can use other resources in the background, not just location. I read in a different article which I still cannot find, that killing an app still doesn’t interrupt that grace period that @C DM spoke of which can use resources in the background for up to 10 minutes after you’ve closed an app.