Fastest Way to Close All Apps on Your iPhone or Android

Article Summary 

• Closing apps on iPhone: Closing apps on iPhone happens through the App Switcher, where each open app appears as a preview you swipe upward to close. iPhones with a Home button use a double-click to get there.
• Closing apps on Android: Android phones use the Recent Apps screen, and nearly all of them include a Clear All or Close All button that shuts everything down at once.
• Force-stopping apps: Force-stopping is the more drastic option for misbehaving Android apps, and it lives under Settings and then Apps.
• When to close apps: You do not need to close every app whenever you’re finished using it. Phones manage background activity on their own, and constantly closing can use more battery than it saves. So, closing apps makes more sense when an app freezes, drains the battery, keeps using location data, or keeps playing audio after you are done with it.
• Slow phone fixes: If closing apps does not resolve the slowdown, storage, updates, and battery health are next on the list, and My Computer Works can help track down the cause and suggest fixes.

Our phones have apps in the background daily, and most of the time, that is completely normal. With modern phones, you can bounce between apps, get notifications, stream audio, follow a map, and return to an app without losing your place. Usually, the trouble begins when one app freezes, keeps using your location, or keeps running long after you are done with it.

That is when it helps to know the fastest way to close running apps on mobile devices. iPhone and Android handle the process a little differently, but both offer quick ways to clear an app that is causing problems. If you want to learn more, keep reading what My Computer Works suggests as the fastest way to close all applications. 

How to Close Apps on iPhone

The steps for how to close apps on an iPhone depend on whether or not your phone has a Home button. All you need to do is force-close an app on an Apple iPhone when it stops responding, then reopen it to see if the problem clears. Apple also points out that there is usually no reason to keep quitting apps all day just to save battery.

However, on newer iPhones without a Home button, swipe up with your finger from the bottom edge and pause halfway up the screen, then lift your finger. The App Switcher opens with a preview of every app you have open. Swipe left or right until you find the troublemaker, then push its preview up and off the top of the screen to close it. 

You can also drag two or three previews away at once with multiple fingers, which speeds things up since there is no single “Close All Apps” button on iPhone. Apple never created one.

On older models with a Home button, including the iPhone SE and iPhone 8, double-click the Home button instead. The same previews appear, and closing works the same way, so find the app and push its preview up and off the screen. 

That’s it. That is the whole process for how to clear apps on iPhone, whether the app is frozen or you simply want it out of the way.

How To Close Apps On Android

Android handles closing apps differently depending on the brand, model, and navigation style, but the goal is the same on every phone. Even so, learning how to close all apps on Android takes about a minute. 

You will start by opening the Recent Apps screen, and on most phones that means swiping up from the bottom edge, holding your finger mid-screen for a moment, then letting go. If your phone uses button navigation instead, tap the Recents button at the bottom of your phone’s screen, which looks like a square on Pixel phones and three vertical lines on Samsung devices.

After you do this, your open apps appear as a row of cards. You’ll swipe left or right to browse through them, then swipe a card upward to close that app. 

To shut everything down in one go, look for a button labeled “Clear All” or “Close All”. Samsung puts Close All right at the bottom of the screen, while Pixel phones tuck ‘Clear All’ away at the far left of the row, past your oldest open app.

Google lists Clear All as the official way to clear background apps that Android phones keep in memory, so once you tap it, the open app cards are cleared.

How to Force-Stop Apps and Why

If an app keeps freezing or causing battery drain, clearing it from the recent apps list may not be enough. Force-stopping is useful for stubborn cases, especially when an app keeps running in the background after you close it from the Recent Apps screen.

On Android, open Settings, go to Apps, select the problematic app, and tap Force-Stop if available. That shuts the app down more thoroughly than clearing it from the recent list, since it also halts whatever the app was doing in the background.

On the other hand, iPhone handles things differently when you want to force-close apps. The standard force-close apps iPhone method is the same App Switcher swipe covered earlier, because iOS does not offer a separate force-stop setting. If the same app keeps freezing after you reopen it, restart the phone. Then check for app and iOS updates before assuming something worse is going on if things keep freezing or battery drain keeps happening.

Mythbusting: Should You Always Close Apps?

There is a common myth that you have to close all the apps you open each day. However, here is the part that surprises people. You do not actually need to close every app all day long, because modern smartphones are designed to manage background activity on their own. Constant force-closing can even backfire, since reopening an app from scratch often uses more power than keeping the phone suspended.

The better approach is to close apps when there is a reason. Close one if it is frozen, showing errors, playing audio you cannot locate, or sitting at the top of your battery usage list. The apps draining battery while you are not even using them are the ones worth swiping away. Everything else can usually stay open without causing problems.

Other Ways To Improve Phone Performance

Closing apps is one step, and honestly, it is the smallest one. To improve phone performance in the long term, you’ll need to complete phone maintenance. This usually means checking your storage, restarting the device, and removing apps you haven’t opened in months. Additionally, it’s also important to update the operating system, but if you are unsure whether installing the newest version is the right move, we can help with that.

For any of our Android users reading this, you can also try to improve performance by clearing the cache on the app that is causing the problem. This usually removes any temporary files without affecting your saved data. 

However, on iPhone, a restart paired with an iOS update fixes a surprising number of app glitches and helps maintain performance. 

Get Help With A Slow Or Frozen Phone

In most situations, closing apps from the App Switcher on iPhone or the Recent Apps screen on Android can be a quick phone running slow fix, especially when one app freezes or keeps acting up. If the problem keeps coming back, though, it may be time to take a closer look, since it’s unlikely that your open apps are the issue.

My Computer Works can help with useful mobile troubleshooting tips for iPhone and Android users, so you can understand what is causing the issue and get your device working properly again.