You’re probably doing it right now. You finish checking an email, swipe up to go home, and then—out of habit—you pull up that carousel of open windows and start flicking them away like you're clearing digital cobwebs. It feels productive. It looks clean.
But honestly? You're kinda wasting your time.
The question of how do I close my apps on my iphone usually comes from a place of wanting to save battery or make the phone run faster. We've been told for decades that "too many programs open" slows down a computer. But an iPhone isn't a 1998 beige tower PC. It's a sophisticated pocket computer that manages its own memory way better than you can.
The Actual Steps to Close Your Apps
If an app is acting glitchy or frozen, you definitely need to kill it. Here is the actual, no-nonsense way to do it on modern iPhones (anything from the iPhone X up to the brand-new iPhone 17 and iPhone Air models).
- Swipe up and hold. Start at the very bottom edge of your screen. Swipe up about an inch or two toward the middle and just... pause. Don't let go immediately.
- The App Switcher appears. You'll see your open apps appear like a deck of cards spread out across the screen.
- Find the culprit. Swipe left or right to scroll through the apps until you find the one that's giving you trouble.
- The Flick. Using one finger, flick the app's preview window straight up and off the top of the screen. It’s gone.
If you're still rocking an older model with a physical Home Button (like the iPhone SE or an iPhone 8), you just double-click that round button to see the same "deck of cards" and swipe up to close them.
A Pro Tip for the Impatient
Did you know you can close three apps at once? If you’re determined to clear the deck, use three fingers to swipe up on three adjacent app previews simultaneously. It works, though it’s a bit of digital gymnastics.
Why You Actually Shouldn't Be Doing This
Here is the part that surprises most people: Apple executives, including Craig Federighi (the guy in charge of iOS), have explicitly stated that closing background apps does not improve battery life.
When you swipe an app away, you are "force quitting" it. Under normal circumstances, when you leave an app, iOS "freezes" it. It stays in the RAM (Random Access Memory) but isn't actually using the CPU (the brain of the phone). It’s essentially in a deep sleep.
When you want to use it again, the iPhone just "wakes it up." This takes almost zero energy.
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However, if you force close the app, the iPhone has to reload every single bit of code from the storage to the RAM the next time you open it. Think of it like a car. Is it better to leave the car idling for 30 seconds at a red light, or turn the engine completely off and restart it? Modern iPhones are designed to "idle" extremely efficiently. Constant restarting actually drains your battery faster over the course of a day.
When Closing Apps is Actually Smart
I'm not saying you should never do it. There are three specific times when knowing how do I close my apps on my iphone is a lifesaver.
- The App Is Frozen: If Instagram won't load your feed or Google Maps is stuck on a white screen, kill it. Force quitting resets the app's internal state.
- The "Energy Vampire" Apps: Some apps are notorious for background drain. If you notice your battery is plummeting and you see "Background Activity" for an app like Facebook or a navigation app you aren't using, swipe it away.
- Privacy Paranoia: If you just finished a sensitive banking session or used an app you don't want "sleeping" in the background, go ahead and flick it into the void for peace of mind.
What to do if the "Flick" Doesn't Work
Sometimes a phone gets so bogged down that the App Switcher won't even appear. This is rare in 2026 with the power of the A19 chips, but software bugs happen. If your screen is unresponsive, you need a Force Restart.
Quickly press and release the Volume Up button. Immediately press and release the Volume Down button. Then, hold the Side Power Button and don't let go until you see the Apple logo. This is a hard reset—it clears the "brain" without deleting your photos or data.
Better Ways to Save Battery
If your goal was to save juice, forget the App Switcher.
Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. This is the real secret. You can tell your phone "Hey, don't let TikTok update itself while I'm not looking." Turning this off for non-essential apps does ten times more for your battery than swiping apps away ever will.
Also, check Settings > Battery to see the "Last 24 Hours" report. It will literally tell you which app is the culprit. If a game you played for five minutes used 40% of your battery, that’s a sign the app is poorly optimized, not that you forgot to close it.
Actionable Next Steps:
Check your Battery settings right now to identify any "Energy Vampire" apps. If an app shows high background usage, disable its "Background App Refresh" permissions instead of manually closing it every time. Only use the swipe-up gesture when an app is physically unresponsive or acting up.