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iOS 4 - can I close and app without it staying open in the background?

From what I know, pressing on the home button on iphone 4 will merely hide the application, instead of closing it.

So how can I make sure that all the unwanted apps are closed, so that the memory can be reused?

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marked as duplicate by Dori Oct 24 '10 at 0:03

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

1 Answer

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You have two options to close an app:

  1. With the application hidden (i.e. if you are currently at the home screen or are interacting with another app) you can double-press the home button, hold down any icon in the app switcher until they all start to wiggle, and press the minus icon in the top left corner of the app you want to close.

  2. With the application in the foreground, you can hold down the power key until the "slide to power off" option appears, and then hold down the home button until the the application quits.

The first option is faster.

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Interesting; I didn't know about option 2. It doesn't work for me though: the app eventually closes, yes, in the sense that you return to home screen, but it still stays in the background. – Jonik Oct 24 '10 at 9:09
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Interestingly, the second option does close an app, but does not remove it from the app switcher. You can confirm this by, for example, drilling down a few levels in the Settings app. After closing the app using the second method, and then reopening it, you will find yourself back at the main Settings screen; i.e. the "state" of the Settings app has been lost. The second method of quitting an app is mentioned in the iPhone documentation and can even be used on iPhones that do not support multitasking, to quit, for example, an iPod app that is not responding. – sentinel Oct 24 '10 at 13:02
Ah, thanks for the explanation! Perhaps this should be mentioned in the other, non-closed question too... (Or maybe @Dori could merge this into that question?) – Jonik Oct 24 '10 at 17:54

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