Closing an app is a sure way to fix it if it becomes unresponsive on any Apple-branded handset, but how exactly does the process work on the iPhone 13? Modern smartphones have come a long way in recent years. Displays are larger and brighter, processors are vastly more powerful, batteries last longer, etc. For all the improvements we've made, however, phones aren't perfect. Today's phones are generally more reliable than ones that were available a few years ago, but every now and then, they can still act wonky. Maybe a software update caused an application to misbehave. Perhaps something broke with the touchscreen, and it's no longer responding.

For a lot of users, one of the most basic troubleshooting tips is closing an application. Most people use a lot of apps on any given day. Sometimes, it can be a good idea to go through these apps and close them so they aren't constantly running in the background. To do so on the iPhone 13, the process is as follows — from the iPhone 13's home screen, swipe up from the bottom of the display, hold your finger there until you feel a small vibration, swipe horizontally to see all the open apps, and then swipe up on any app in the list to close it. This works on all iPhone 13 models, including the regular iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Related: Does The iPhone 13 Need A Screen Protector?

Close Multiple Apps On iPhone 13 At Once

A screenshot of the iOS app switcher on iPhone 13 over a gradient background

Users who have switched to an iPhone 13 from an Android phone might be wondering why it isn't possible to close all open apps at once. After all, on Android, this is pretty easy. All users need to do is open the app switcher and tap on the 'Clear all' button to close all running apps. It's easy and convenient, and annoyingly, it's just one of those features that the iPhone doesn't offer. However, there is a little trick that can be used to close more than one open app at a time.

On your iPhone 13, swipe up from the bottom of the display and hold until the open apps are displayed. Now, instead of swiping up on apps individually, swipe up on the screen with three fingers to close three open apps at once. With some practice, it's even possible to close four apps at once using four fingers, although this will require a bit of maneuvering. The three-finger swipe works seamlessly though, and is the quickest way to shut all the open apps on an iPhone 13.

When To Close Apps On Your iPhone 13

Example showing how to close apps on an iPhone

Closing apps is easy enough, but this also raises an important question: When is it a good idea to close applications on the iPhone 13? In almost every situation, you should only be closing apps if they appear broken. Apple says as much on its official support page, noting, "You should close an app only if it’s unresponsive." There's long been an assumption that regularly closing smartphone apps helps conserve battery life and reduce memory usage. This held some weight many years ago, but today, it's no longer a necessity. In fact, it's better for your iPhone 13 not to close apps like this.

The iPhone 13 has built-in tools to automatically manage background apps so that they aren't taking up unnecessary battery or memory resources. It was designed with the intent of running multiple apps at once, so going through and manually closing them all the time is mostly redundant. Furthermore, not every app that appears in the multitasking menu is actively running on the iPhone. As Apple explains on another support page, "After you switch to a different app, some apps run for a short period of time before they're set to a suspended state. Apps that are in a suspended state aren’t actively in use, open, or taking up system resources."

That should be the biggest takeaway from this article. If an application is running slowly, completely frozen, or acting up in any other way, closing the app and re-opening it is a good solution. Outside those situations, however, there's no need to regularly do this. Keep those apps open, only close them if you absolutely need to, and your iPhone 13 should run like butter.

If users are still concerned about their apps’ background activity, Apple makes it easy to view which apps are drawing on the phone’s power when not in use. In the phone’s settings under the ‘Battery’ tab, iOS contains a hub dedicated to battery usage and background activity, breaking it down in a list by app and the percentage of use. Users can optimize battery life by turning off background refreshing. To do this, go to ‘General’ in the Settings app then tap ‘Background App Refresh.’ From here, users can choose when to allow apps to refresh in the background: when the iPhone 13 is connected to Wi-Fi, when connected to both Wi-Fi and Cellular Data, or not at all.

Source: Apple 1, 2