Does Closing Apps Save Battery?
No, force-closing apps generally does not save battery and may actually waste more power. Modern smartphones intelligently manage background apps, suspending them to use minimal resources. Repeatedly closing and reopening apps uses more energy than leaving them in the background. Better options: use dark mode or airplane mode.
Key Takeaways
- Both iOS and Android have sophisticated memory management that automatically suspends apps in the background.
- Frozen or malfunctioning apps that are actively draining battery should be force-closed.
- Apps actively using GPS, playing music, or running background processes are different from suspended apps.
Explanation
Both iOS and Android have sophisticated memory management that automatically suspends apps in the background. Suspended apps use virtually no CPU or battery. If you are worried about long-term battery health from fast charging, that is a separate concern from background app management. The operating system handles this more efficiently than manual app management.
When you force-close an app and later reopen it, your phone must reload it from scratch, which uses more CPU cycles and battery than resuming a suspended app from memory. Constantly closing apps can actually increase battery usage rather than decrease it.
The apps that do drain battery in the background are ones with special permissions for location tracking, notifications, or background refresh. Managing these specific permissions is more effective than blindly closing all apps.
Apple and Google have both explicitly stated that swiping away apps does not improve battery life. Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of Software Engineering, confirmed in an email that force-closing apps is unnecessary and not recommended. On Android, the system uses a prioritized memory management approach where the least recently used app is automatically removed when RAM is needed. A suspended app sitting in memory uses zero CPU cycles and negligible battery, roughly equivalent to storing a bookmark in a web browser.
The real battery drains to address are screen brightness (which accounts for 30-50% of total battery consumption), cellular signal searching in weak coverage areas, and background location services. On iOS, go to Settings > Battery to see a detailed breakdown by app. On Android, check Settings > Battery > Battery Usage. Apps like Facebook, Snapchat, and navigation tools often appear at the top because they use background location, push notifications, and video autoplay rather than because they are sitting idle in memory.
Things to Know
- Frozen or malfunctioning apps that are actively draining battery should be force-closed.
- Apps actively using GPS, playing music, or running background processes are different from suspended apps.
- Checking which apps use the most battery in settings is more useful than guessing.
- On older devices with 2GB of RAM or less, aggressive multitasking with 20+ apps may cause the system to frequently reload apps from storage, and force-closing rarely used apps may provide a minor benefit in those specific cases.