Force Quit

Why Apple Geniuses sometimes tell people to kill all their apps

By Rene Ritchie, Sunday, Apr 22, 2012 a 5:03 pm

A little over a year ago I wrote a rather controversial editorial stating that iOS users don't ever need to kill all the apps in their multitasking dock (fast app switcher). Earlier this year the subject was brought back to the spotlight, with other developers and bloggers reaching pretty much the same conclusion.

Reminder: You really don't need to manually manage apps for iPhone or iPad

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Jan 6, 2012 a 11:07 pm

About a year ago I wrote a post explaining why you don't have to kill multitasking apps in iOS. iOS 4 had been introduced, bringing multitasking to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and because Apple added the ability to jiggle and close them in the fast app switcher, some users decided to do just that. All. The. Time.

TiPb Answers: No, you don't need to kill all the apps in your multitasking dock

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Feb 18, 2011 a 12:55 pm

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One of the most frequent questions we're getting these days is how to close all apps at once -- basically how to force quit or kill every app from the new multitasking/fast app switcher dock Apple introduced in iOS 4 for iPhone and iPod touch and iOS 4.2 for iPad.

The short answer is you don't need to. Really. If you've been worried about it, relax. It's all good.

For the long answer, read on after the break!

iOS 4 features: Background app killing

By Rene Ritchie, Tuesday, Aug 10, 2010 a 7:59 am

iOS 4's new fast app switcher interface also allows you to kill both Apple and 3rd party App Store apps that may be causing problems in the background.

To access the fast app switcher in iOS 4, double click the home button on iPhone 4 iPhone 3GS, or iPod touch G3. The interface will slide up and reveal a second dock-like set of app icons "in the background". To kill an app, tap and hold the app until the icons begin to jiggle, then tap the minus symbol (-) at the top left corner. The app will then disappear, "deleted" from the background dock (but not from your iPhone or iPod).

This force quiwill do a couple of different things depending on the type of app.

How To: Force Quit in iPhone 3.0

By Rene Ritchie, Saturday, Jun 13, 2009 a 10:14 am

With iPhone 1.x and 2.x, you could hold down the Home button to "force quit" an application (kill the process) and return to the Home Screen. With iPhone 3.0, however, holding down the Home button now activates Voice Control on the iPhone 3G S.

So, how do you Force Quit under iPhone 3.0? iPhonejunkie3 provides the answer (via EverythingiCafe):

How To: Free Up Resources on Your iPhone With Force Quit

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Aug 21, 2008 a 2:10 pm

UPDATE: Force Quit has changed in iPhone 3.0. Check out our new how-to!

Those of us who rock Mac OS X know all about the "Force Quit". For Windows users, think killing an application via Task Manager. They're both ways to shut down non-responsive or otherwise rogue applications from freezing us out or just slowing us down. For iPhone users, well, we don't have to worry about that, do we? (Remember Apple mocking Windows Mobile for multitask management?)