Quit entire switcher tray with one action.

[isprocket]

Is it possible to quit all apps running in the background with one or two clicks. I some times become aware that so many apps are "idling" in the background. I no longer need them there so I quit them one at a time in the "double click home button" switcher tray.
Is there a way to quit them all at the same time with a short cut?

 

[Julien]

Is it possible to quit all apps running in the background with one or two clicks...

Apps don't run in the background. A few Apps are able to run certain API's in the background and they will have a icon (like an arrow for locations or a play arrow for playback) in the menu bar to show they are running.

I believe the only way to remove the shortcut links is one at a time.

Here is a fantastic article that coves iOS App behavior.

 

[isprocket]

Big thanks, very good article. I'll throttle down my concerns about apps in the switching tray. Still, Julien, it would be cool to have a shortcut to empty that multi-app tray. I don't feel I need the few apps, like Mail, that do some monitoring at certain times of the day. Example, when I'm asleep. Maybe iOS 6 will show up with a short cut. It's on my wish list.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

Interesting article. However, if I close out Infinity Blade/II and don't kill it off from the multitasking bar, my battery will deplete a bit faster. Also, the statement that apps in the multitasking bar NEVER reflect anything other than recently launched apps is erroneous. If I close out IB/II using the home button, and then come back to it later, it resumes from exactly where I left off. If I quit it in the multitasking bar, it relaunches afresh. Same for my GPS app. So, yes, the multitasking bar DOES have some relevance to what is running, but you have to be able to intelligently decide for yourself which apps are going to be problematic.

 

[Aidoneus]

Interesting article. However, if I close out Infinity Blade/II and don't kill it off from the multitasking bar, my battery will deplete a bit faster. Also, the statement that apps in the multitasking bar NEVER reflect anything other than recently launched apps is erroneous. If I close out IB/II using the home button, and then come back to it later, it resumes from exactly where I left off. If I quit it in the multitasking bar, it relaunches afresh. Same for my GPS app. So, yes, the multitasking bar DOES have some relevance to what is running, but you have to be able to intelligently decide for yourself which apps are going to be problematic.

This is because an app's state is held in the memory of the phone until it is either quit or another app requires the memory. Quitting Infinity Blade from the multitasking bar will not affect your phone's performance or its battery life.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

Quitting Infinity Blade from the multitasking bar will not affect your phone's performance or its battery life.

According to what should happen, yes. According to experience, no. I have already stated, in the post you quoted, that there is a dip in battery life if I leave Infinity Blade on in the background. Are you saying what I experienced didn't happen?

 

[Daveoc64]

According to what should happen, yes. According to experience, no. I have already stated, in the post you quoted, that there is a dip in battery life if I leave Infinity Blade on in the background. Are you saying what I experienced didn't happen?

It would be very difficult to prove.

It's near impossible to do a 100% identical battery comparison.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

It would be very difficult to prove.

It's near impossible to do a 100% identical battery comparison.

No argument there. But when multitasking debuted, I found that leaving it running in the background caused a quicker battery drop than when quitting it right away. I'm not the only person who has experienced this. Do a Google search on the subject and you'll find plenty of hits.

 

[Feed Me]

When an app is put to sleep in the background it uses 0% CPU.
(unless it's using a background process to complete a task or play music or whatever)

I'm not just spouting Apple marketing stuff here, they really do use no CPU whatsoever, and therefore have no effect on battery life. Download Xcode and use instruments to see for yourself. I'm sorry to say that any battery depletion you notice is all in your head

 

[PNutts]

Is it possible to quit all apps running in the background with one or two clicks. I some times become aware that so many apps are "idling" in the background. I no longer need them there so I quit them one at a time in the "double click home button" switcher tray.
Is there a way to quit them all at the same time with a short cut?

There's an app for that! Kill

Edit: Also, the article (or more specifically, the random blogger) doesn't have it right. Suspended apps do consume memory. From his blog post, "The first technical caveat is that Suspended apps remain in the device's memory." and then later "If someone tells you that all the apps in the multitasking bar are running, using up memory or sucking power, they are wrong."

I'm looking for a much better article I saw awhile back... There have been threads on this topic before with very detailed information.

 

[WordMasterRice]

There's an app for that! Kill

Edit: Also, the article (or more specifically, the random blogger) doesn't have it right. Suspended apps do consume memory. From his blog post, "The first technical caveat is that Suspended apps remain in the device's memory." and then later "If someone tells you that all the apps in the multitasking bar are running, using up memory or sucking power, they are wrong."

I'm looking for a much better article I saw awhile back... There have been threads on this topic before with very detailed information.

Whether they use memory or not is of no relevance to anyone though. RAM doesn't draw more power because it is being used. Furthermore empty ram is wasted ram. You want that stuff to be full 100% of the time. If you need some for something you are doing that's the OS's job to clear, which is exactly what it does.

 

[GalvaJ]

I don't know if you're jailbroken or not. But, an app called CloseEnhancer does exactly what you're looking for. I've been using it for a few days and love it. I use an activator gesture to open the AppSwitcher bar and then I can just swipe up on any app I want to kill or hold the home button for a few seconds to kill them all.

And about battery life with apps, I've seen that having my AppSwitcher empty over night consumes less battery than having it populated with apps.

 

[hexonxonx]

No argument there. But when multitasking debuted, I found that leaving it running in the background caused a quicker battery drop than when quitting it right away. I'm not the only person who has experienced this. Do a Google search on the subject and you'll find plenty of hits.

Correct. I have a few apps that if left running without quitting from the app switcher, will drain my battery in a few hours. These are the XM Skydock and the TomTom app.

 

[ExnomenDei]

There are a few apps that, when left on in the background, are capable of doing something. These are:

- Media apps
- Navigation apps
- Apps that track your location using cell towers and / or WiFi
- Voice over IP applications

And perhaps one or two that fall in special categories. Apart from that, no properly made app will run in any way, shape or form in the background and is unable to do anything about it.

 

[PNutts]

Whether they use memory or not is of no relevance to anyone though. RAM doesn't draw more power because it is being used. Furthermore empty ram is wasted ram. You want that stuff to be full 100% of the time. If you need some for something you are doing that's the OS's job to clear, which is exactly what it does.

In a perfect world the OS would do that. However there have been too many times where I need to close apps in the recently used apps list when the kids have 20 or 30 "open" to stop the phone from being sluggish. Developers recommend restarting the phone when their apps fail to launch and I give them some credibility. As I just found out last week on a Windows Server 2008, when the CPU starts to actively manage memory in a low RAM situation then there are less CPU cycles for everything else. It's the difference between "I have to free this before launching the app" instead of "launching the app".

 

[Giuly]

There's an app for that! Kill

Edit: Also, the article (or more specifically, the random blogger) doesn't have it right. Suspended apps do consume memory. From his blog post, "The first technical caveat is that Suspended apps remain in the device's memory." and then later "If someone tells you that all the apps in the multitasking bar are running, using up memory or sucking power, they are wrong."

I'm looking for a much better article I saw awhile back... There have been threads on this topic before with very detailed information.

Computers with little RAM slow down because when the RAM is full, the hard drive is used as virtual RAM, which is significantly slower than the RAM. That's why you want A) lots of RAM and B) an SSD.

I'm pretty sure that the App states in memory are the first things that get swapped onto the flash of the iDevice, hence they technically don't waste any RAM. The result is that the Apps restart a little slower, but the performance of the currently running App isn't affected at all. As an iDevice runs only one app at a time, this kind of behavior is desired and probably implemented like this by Apple.

That said, you can't program an App to do stuff in the background, except very limited things, like checking for messages from Apples server and putting up those dots with numbers when they arrive. But as this is implemented for all Apps using this in the OS itself, it doesn't make any difference whether one or one hundred Apps check for new messages (It's in the iPhoneOS 3 or iOS 4 keynote, you might want to catch that on YouTube).

If you have jailbroken your iDevice, programmers can do whatever the heck they want (which is kinda the purpose of jailbreaking), even run stuff in the background extensively and drain your battery. But that's not intended nor Apples fault.