How to swipe off apps on iphone 11

• To close apps on an iPhone X or newer, swipe up on the screen.
• You can close multiple apps at once by swiping up on all of them at the same time.
• If you have an iPhone 8 or older, you'll close apps by double-pressing the Home button.

Years of using desktop computers — both PCs and Macs — have "taught" us that keeping a lot of programs running will slow down the PC, use up memory, and cause glitches.

As a result, you might want to apply those same lessons to your iPhone, and close apps you aren't using. The reality is that you don't really need to do that: closing iPhone apps generally doesn't save battery life, extend your memory, or help your phone run better.

In fact, it can sometimes make things worse. That's because Apple designed iOS to intelligently manage apps, putting them in "suspended" low-power and low-memory states when not in use.

All that said, there may be times when you really need to close an app, especially if it's misbehaving. The process varies slightly depending upon which iPhone you're using.  

How to close apps on an iPhone X or newer

1. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the app switcher. You should see all of your apps represented as cards.

2. Swipe side-to-side through your apps until you find the one you want to close.

3. Swipe up on the app you want to close. When it disappears off the top of the screen, it's closed.

When you're done closing apps, tap the screen to close the app switcher. If you tap an app card, you'll open that app; if you tap the screen around the cards, you'll be returned to the Home screen.

How to close apps on an iPhone 8 or earlier

1. Double-press the Home button. This starts the app switcher, where you should see all of your apps represented as cards.

2. Swipe side-to-side through your apps until you find the one you want to close.

3. Swipe up on the app you want to close. When it disappears off the top of the screen, it's closed.

How to close multiple apps at once

Here's a handy little trick: It's possible to close up to three apps at a time.

To do that, just open the app switcher, and swipe up on up to three apps at the same time with multiple fingers.

It can take a little practice and coordination to pull this off, and obviously it needs to be three side-by-side apps that are all visible on the screen at once; it might be easier to just close them one at a time, but this option is available to you.

Dave Johnson

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Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life. Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider.

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Even iOS apps occasionally misbehave — they can crash, or freeze, or otherwise stop working. If you’re new to iOS or just haven’t had this happen before, you may not know how to actually quit an app (as opposed to just swiping it off your screen). Here’s how to quit an app and, if you need to, shut down your phone. (We used a phone loaded with a beta of iOS 16, but this will work with earlier versions of the OS just as well.)

Quit an app

• Open the App Switcher by either swiping up from the bottom of the screen and then pausing in the middle or (if you have a Home button) double pressing the Home button.
• You’ll see an overlapping view of all your open apps. Swipe to the right or left until you find the app you want to quit.
• Swipe up on the app to close it.

While there isn’t any way to close all of your apps at once, you can swipe off up to three apps at a time by using the appropriate number of fingers. Otherwise, if you’ve got a lot of apps running, you’ll have to simply swipe them off one at a time.

Shut down your phone

If, for any reason, swiping the app off doesn’t solve the problem, then shut down your phone by pressing and holding the side button and either volume button until you see sliders appear. Drag the one that says slide to power off to the right. (If you have an iPhone with a Home button, instead, press and hold the side or the Sleep / Wake button.)

You should then be able to restart it by using the power button.

If worse comes to worst and you can’t shut down your phone this way, you can force restart it. If you have an iPhone 8 or later:

• Quickly press and release the volume up button.
• Quickly press and release the volume down button.
• Press and hold the side power button. After a while, the screen should go black; keep holding the button until you see the Apple logo, which will indicate that the phone has restarted. You can then release the button.

Update September 1st, 2022, 10:11AM ET: This article was originally published on June 4th, 2021, and has been updated to add information on force restarting an iPhone.

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