You Aren't Really Saving Your iPhone's Battery Life When You Do This

You can quit all the iPhone apps you want, but your battery life probably won't get any better.

According to Mashable, Apple officially debunked the myth that forcing quit all of the iPhone apps that appear open in your multitasking view will improve battery life.

The revelation came in response to an email sent by a customer to Apple CEO Tim Cook on March 6.

The customer asked,

Do you quit your iOS multitasking apps frequently and is this necessary of battery life?

The email was sent to Cook, but it was Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, who wrote back the following day.

Federighi replied,

No and no.

The customer technically could have answered his or her own question by just looking at Apple's support page, which states,

 Generally, there's no need to force an app to close unless it's unresponsive.

Many apps appear in your multitasking view when you tap the home button twice, but it turns out the majority of them aren't actually running, the page says.

Apple explained,

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.

The apps that typically drain the most battery are location services, so it'd be wise to only allow an app to use your current location if it is vital to its purpose.

Facebook depletes a great deal of battery as well, but the drainage can be partially diminished if you disable the app's background refresh capability.

If you're particularly concerned about saving battery life, however, you might just want to delete the Facebook app altogether and access the social network via Safari instead.

Last month, The Guardian discovered doing this can save around 15 percent of an iPhone's battery life.

Citations: Apple confirms killing your apps doesnt really save battery life (Mashable), Uninstalling Facebook app saves up to 15 of iPhone battery life (The Guardian)