How to Close Running Apps on iPhone: What You Need to Know

Closing apps on iPhone seems straightforward — swipe up, done. But there's a lot more happening under the hood, and whether closing apps is actually helping your iPhone depends on several factors most users never think about.

What "Running" Actually Means on iPhone

Before diving into the steps, it helps to understand what iOS is actually doing with your apps.

When you leave an app without fully closing it, it enters a suspended state. Suspended apps are still visible in the App Switcher, but they are not actively using your CPU or draining your battery. iOS essentially freezes them in memory so they reload faster when you return.

A small number of apps are allowed to run true background processes — music players, navigation apps, fitness trackers, and apps using background app refresh. These are genuinely active in the background.

This distinction matters because it changes why and when you'd actually want to force-close something.

How to Close Apps on iPhone: The Steps 📱

On iPhone X and Later (Face ID Models)

1. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause briefly in the middle — this opens the App Switcher
2. You'll see a horizontal scroll of app previews
3. Swipe up on any app card to close it
4. Repeat for any other apps you want to close

On iPhone 8 and Earlier (Home Button Models)

1. Double-press the Home button to open the App Switcher
2. Scroll left or right to browse open app cards
3. Swipe up on any app card to close it

That's the full mechanical process. It hasn't changed significantly across iOS versions, though the gesture timing on Face ID models can take some getting used to.

When Closing Apps Actually Makes Sense

This is where individual context starts to matter.

Force-closing is genuinely useful when:

• An app is frozen or unresponsive — closing and reopening it is the correct fix
• An app is behaving unexpectedly (crashing, showing errors, not syncing) and you want a clean restart
• You're done with a navigation or location-sharing app and want to stop active GPS usage
• You've finished a call or session in an app you know runs persistent background processes

Force-closing is generally not useful when:

• You're trying to save battery life — Apple's own guidance and independent testing consistently show that repeatedly killing suspended apps can actually increase battery drain, because relaunching from scratch uses more energy than resuming from suspension
• You're trying to speed up your iPhone — suspended apps don't slow down your active apps; iOS memory management handles this automatically
• You're doing it as a routine habit — it's extra work with no reliable benefit for most users

Background App Refresh: The Variable Most People Miss

One factor that genuinely does affect battery life and data usage is Background App Refresh — a separate setting that allows apps to update their content while not in use.

You can manage this independently of force-closing:

• Go to Settings → General → Background App Refresh
• Toggle it off globally or per-app

This is often more effective than manually closing apps, because it targets the actual source of background activity rather than blanket-removing everything from memory.

iOS Version and Device Age: Why Results Vary

Older iPhones with less RAM — models with 2GB or 3GB — handle app suspension differently than newer models with 6GB or more. On older devices, iOS is more aggressive about evicting apps from memory anyway, so manual closing has even less impact.

Similarly, behavior can shift slightly between major iOS versions. iOS 16, 17, and 18 have all refined how background processes are prioritized, how aggressively apps are suspended, and how memory is allocated. What was true of iOS 14 behavior isn't necessarily true today.

A Quick Comparison: Suspended vs. Active Background Apps

The Part That Depends on Your Situation

Whether you should be closing apps regularly, occasionally, or almost never comes down to specifics that vary from one iPhone to the next. 🔍

An iPhone 15 Pro with the latest iOS behaves very differently from an iPhone 11 running an older version. A user who streams audio all day has different background app dynamics than someone who checks email and browses. Someone noticing unusual battery drain needs to look at what's actually consuming power — which Settings → Battery and Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services can help diagnose — rather than assuming app-switching is the culprit.

The mechanics of closing apps are consistent. What isn't consistent is whether doing so actually solves whatever problem prompted the question in the first place — and that depends entirely on what your iPhone is doing, what iOS version you're running, and what you're actually trying to fix.