{
  "id": 15715560,
  "title": "The iPhone battery myth almost everyone believes, and why you can stop swiping away apps",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/20/the-iphone-battery-myth-almost-everyone-believes-and-why-you-can-stop",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-20T07:30:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Tom's Guide",
    "slug": "tom-s-guide",
    "url": "https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphones/the-iphone-battery-myth-almost-everyone-believes-and-why-you-can-stop-swiping-away-apps"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Many people believe that force-closing unused apps on their iPhones will save battery life, but this is a misconception. When you swipe an app away, it's removed from memory completely, causing your iPhone to restart it from scratch the next time you open it, which takes more work than resuming a suspended app. This unnecessary work doesn't provide any benefit. Apple recommends only force-closing an app if it has stopped responding. To conserve battery life, turn off Background App Refresh for apps that don't need it, limit location services to while using the app, and monitor which apps are consuming the most battery in Settings > Battery > View All Battery Usage.",
  "summary": "Think closing your iPhone apps saves battery? It doesn’t, and it can make your phone work harder. Here’s why, plus the settings that really help.",
  "key_points": [
    "Swiping away apps removes them from memory, causing restarts.",
    "Restarting apps takes more work than resuming suspended ones.",
    "Apple suggests force-closing only unresponsive apps."
  ],
  "editors_take": "Manually closing applications actually increases energy consumption by forcing the processor to restart tasks from scratch rather than simply resuming them from a suspended state.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}