With iOS 4’s multitasking feature, how do I quit an app for real? Do they all just keep running in the background?
Not really. What they call “multitasking” is really more like fast app-switching. The apps don’t fully run in the background. iOS lets them perform certain tasks in the background, like playing music, uploading photos to the interwebs, tracking your location, and so on. And the OS remembers the last state your apps were in, so when you relaunch one it goes right back to how you had it.
As James Brown said, you just “hit it and quit.”
But if an app is crashing or acting weird and you want to quit it for real, just press the Home button once to go back to your home screen, then double-click the Home button again to bring up the Task Manager. Press and hold one of those app icons until they start their jiggle-jiggle dance, and then tap the little red minus-sign icon by the app you want to force-quit. That’s it.
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Howard Brazee
April 02, 2011 at 6:37am
The hard part is knowing which apps are running (using up resources), and which are just sitting there.
Mr. Happypants
April 01, 2011 at 4:49pm
I've showed this to more than a few long-time iPhone people who had NO idea it was possible. And, necessary when you've been running dozens (in some cases) of apps for months. A hard reset once in a while doesn't hurt either.
MacAddict4Life
April 02, 2011 at 11:16pm
If you run very many apps, then they will have quite themselves. Only if you run the same app regularly enough that it has not been shut down, and you do not run any other that needs the resources more, will apps stay open in perpetuity.
lairdo
April 01, 2011 at 2:41pm
Thanks for the post, and while I know how to quit an app, seeing the detailed instructions reminded me that this is an area of the iOS that needs work. I wish we could quit out of all running apps at one time and that you could exit an app from the app itself.
