We’ve all been there – your iPhone is running slow, your battery is low or you’re just looking for a terrible way to waste 10 seconds of your life, take your pick – so you double-tap the home button and bring up the app switcher view. One by one, you swipe up on every app until none are left, thinking that by doing so you’ve saved yourself at least another five minutes of battery life or what-have-you.
According to Apple Insider, however, this is apparently a giant fucking waste of time. Not only does swiping away all the apps not do jack shit, but it also…wait, no. It just doesn’t do jack shit. I fucked that up. Oh well:
However, many users mistakenly believe that all apps shown in the app switcher are currently running in the background on their phone, draining performance and battery. That’s incorrect.
Apple’s iOS platform does allow for intelligent multitasking, meaning some apps will operate or finish a task in the background, then automatically close.
However, the iOS app switcher shows all apps that have been opened on an iPhone or iPad, regardless of whether or not they are actually running in the background.
Misconceptions about the iOS app switcher have led many users to adopt the habit of double pressing the home button and swiping up on all apps, constantly, in a futile effort to improve their handset’s battery life or performance.
The truth is, that habit is a waste of time.
If you’re a pain in the ass who needs proof, Apple Insider recommends that you restart your phone, then bring up the app switcher view – you’ll see that all your recent apps are still shown despite having turned your phone off and on.
Bummed? It’s okay, there’s other tricks out there to keep your phone battery humming along smoothly for extra hours at a time, including (but not limited to) putting your phone into Low Power Mode.
[H/T Apple Insider]