‘You’re wasting battery, data and time’ warns iPhone owner over common mistake that millions make

MILLIONS of iPhone owners may be making a big mistake that’s actually slowing their handsets down.

It’s a common habit to swipe apps closed on the switcher screen.

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People often think this makes their iPhone faster – but the opposite is true.

One user noted this in a reply to a Reddit thread asking for iPhone tips.

“For the love of God, don’t spend your life closing all apps,” the comment explained.

“iOS has always been very efficient and intelligent about RAM management.”

The user continued: “Closing apps wastes battery, data and your time.”

Apple itself has warned users not to quit apps to save battery life – instead, only quit apps if they’re not working.

“Typically, there’s no reason to quit an app,” Apple explained.

“Quitting it doesn’t save battery power, for example.”

A separate memo from Apple notes: “You should only close an app if it’s unresponsive.”

Another user in a different thread explained: “In fact when you restart an app that you quit, it requires more resources to bring it back online and fetch all your settings, than it did when just doing the minimum background process.

“So counterintuitively, you make your phone slower by quitting the apps and restarting them.”

The only time you should force-close an app is when it’s not working properly.

Background drain

If you’re worried about apps draining battery in the background, there’s a simple fix.

Just go into Settings > Battery and check out the list of apps that are putting the biggest strain on your device.

If it’s an app you hardly use, consider just deleting it.

But a better solution is to switch off Background App Refresh for those apps.

Some apps (like email services) depend on being active in the background (for instance, to check for new emails).

But for some apps, it’s preferable to turn this feature off to reduce strain on your battery.

Apple’s battery settings will even reveal how much charge has been drained by the app in the background versus when it was in use.

So pay attention to the information in your Settings app to limit battery drain.

This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk