Like any smartphone, the iPhone slows down a bit over time. To cheer it on again, there are a lot of tricks floating around. However, one of the most popular does not help – on the contrary.

Everyone knows the problem: In the beginning, the new smartphone is still incredibly fast. The longer you use them, the slower the devices become. Even Apple’s iPhone is not immune to this. To make it faster again, users resort to all sorts of tricks. One of the most popular: Shooting down all apps via the multitasking view. We explain why this is nonsense – and what to do instead.

One of the reasons app launching is so popular is that it’s so easy to do. Swipe up once from the bottom edge, in the multitasking view that appears, push all apps tiles up – and you’re done. On older models, you only have to double-tap the home button instead of the first swipe. At first glance, the trick makes perfect sense. The apps don’t run in the background, they no longer consume resources. But a closer look reveals that the campaign usually does more harm than good.

The iPhone knows better

Because the iPhone operating system iOS can not only manage its own resources wonderfully – it is even designed for it. If an app is closed, i.e. not forced to end, it may only remain active for a few minutes. After that, the system freezes them and saves the current status of the app in the data storage. It no longer consumes any resources until the user starts it again or a push message wakes it up.

The advantage of this procedure: While a completely closed app first has to be restarted, the iPhone only needs to load the previous status from the data memory into the main memory. This usually consumes far less energy than an app restart. Shooting takes not only longer, but even costs more battery. Another disadvantage of app closing: The apps loaded from the cache are usually opened in the same place where they were closed, this is not the case with the completely closed apps. So users save additional time if they do without shooting.

Of course there are exceptions: apps that play music or need regular access to the GPS signal for navigation or sports measurement can be active in the background for longer. Some apps had tried to exploit this in the past. In the past, for example, the Facebook app would play an inaudible sound and stay active all the time. Such resource sinners are best found in the battery view in the settings. The battery-hungry apps are listed there. If you have hardly used one of them yourself, you should actually shoot them down – or simply throw them off the iPhone in the long run.

How to get iPhone faster again?

If you feel that your iPhone is lagging over time, you should try other methods. So it makes sense to restart the device regularly. Even smartphone junkies should be able to do it once a week. Clearing the data memory can also help. Ultimately, the more data an app has to load, the longer it takes. In the settings you can find under “General” and “iPhone memory” which apps eat up the most memory. If all data is in the cloud, as is the case with Facebook or Instagram, it is worth deleting it once and then reinstalling it. Others, such as Whatsapp, offer a way to delete the accumulated data directly in the app.

As a last resort, you can also restore the iPhone. The system is completely reloaded once. If you want, you can then restore your data from a backup. However, there is a real speed boost if you set it up as a completely new device. Then, however, a lot of data such as SMS is gone. So you have to weigh up.