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iamsaifkhan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 18, 2021
22
1
India
Closing apps from the app switcher in iOS make any difference in terms of overall performance or in battery life?

should i close the app after using them or keep in app switcher (In the background).
 

now i see it

macrumors G4
Jan 2, 2002
11,246
24,263
BS.
The App switcher (I think) should be cleared of all apps every once in a while to make it useful again. If you never clear it, eventually every app you own will be a "card" in the switcher, making it pretty much useless to use.
If you get one of those RAM usage utilities that show how much free and used ram is available, you can clearly see that having a bunch of apps suspended in the App Switcher DOES use up free memory. If you clear out the App switcher, all the free memory returns.

The only reason not to clear the app switcher is when you're trying to eek as much battery life as possible. But if that doesn't matter - I say, kill the apps you're not going to be using again any time soon.

Here's an example:
Here's how much free RAM is available on my iPhone with 21 apps "suspended" in the background in the App Switcher (41.8MB)
image.jpeg


And here's how much RAM is available after I clear them all out (352.8 MB)

image.jpeg
 
Last edited:

iamsaifkhan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 18, 2021
22
1
India
No. Leave them.
BS.
The App switcher (I think) should be cleared of all apps every once in a while to make it useful again. If you never clear it, eventually every app you own will be a "card" in the switcher, making it pretty much useless to use.
If you get one of those RAM usage utilities that show how much free and used ram is available, you can clearly see that having a bunch of apps suspended in the App Switcher DOES use up free memory. If you clear out the App switcher, all the free memory returns.

The only reason not to clear the app switcher is when you're trying to eek as much battery life as possible. But if that doesn't matter - I say, kill the apps you're not going to be using again any time soon.

Here's an example:
Here's how much free RAM is available on my iPhone with 21 apps "suspended" in the background in the App Switcher (41.8MB)
View attachment 1820852

And here's how much RAM is available after I clear them all out (352.8 MB)

View attachment 1820854
Thanks a lot ☺️
You cleared all my doubts.
 

akash.nu

macrumors G4
May 26, 2016
10,870
16,998
BS.
The App switcher (I think) should be cleared of all apps every once in a while to make it useful again. If you never clear it, eventually every app you own will be a "card" in the switcher, making it pretty much useless to use.
If you get one of those RAM usage utilities that show how much free and used ram is available, you can clearly see that having a bunch of apps suspended in the App Switcher DOES use up free memory. If you clear out the App switcher, all the free memory returns.

The only reason not to clear the app switcher is when you're trying to eek as much battery life as possible. But if that doesn't matter - I say, kill the apps you're not going to be using again any time soon.

Here's an example:
Here's how much free RAM is available on my iPhone with 21 apps "suspended" in the background in the App Switcher (41.8MB)
View attachment 1820852

And here's how much RAM is available after I clear them all out (352.8 MB)

View attachment 1820854

How does it matter how much memory usage that app shows if it doesn’t have any impact on usability?
 
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Reactions: StumpyBloke

now i see it

macrumors G4
Jan 2, 2002
11,246
24,263
Well I'm coming from an iPhone 6+ that only has 1GB of RAM so RAM gets used up pretty quickly. Since 1GB phones are no longer made, my experience with constrained RAM doesn't really mirror the memory performance of the newer phones.
But
If I have a lot of apps suspended in the background (like 10 or more) and then launch a video editor and try to start editing a video, more times than not, the app will crash.
But
If I clear out the app switcher and force quit all my background apps before launching the video editing app, my video editing app will never crash.
So
The conclusion I came to was that suspended apps in the background do use up usable ram.
 
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