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Multitasking: Switch Between Apps

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iPhone Guru

February 2, 2015

Multitasking: Switch Between Apps

It is important to understand how multitasking and background activity on your Apple devices work. Multitasking allows apps to perform certain tasks in the background while users either open other apps, or simply lay their iPhone, iPad or iPod down and walk away.

Multitasking is not only convenient, but maintains the performance speed of the foreground app while keeping the battery life high as well. Because of this feature, users can switch quickly between apps and see updated content when they open or return to their apps.

Users can switch between apps and when they return to a background app, the user can pick up right where they left off. Here’s how you switch quickly from one app to another:

Double-click the Home button to display recently used apps.
Swipe left or right to find the app you want use.
Tap whichever background app you wish to open.
Allow apps to refresh in the background.

Note that some apps will run for a short period of time before they’re set to a suspended state, but will still continue to run in the background. This means they’re not actively in use or taking up system resources. These settings let apps retrieve updated content or check and download updates in the background when they receive push notifications. When you want to use that app, it’ll open instantly. You can allow these apps to refresh themselves by turning on Background App Refresh. To use these settings, tap Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

Don’t forget that in order to save battery life when you are done using the iPod, verify that the Radio application is off, music is paused and that there is no active Pedometer session. If you have an iPod nano, dimming the screen is another good way to extend your battery life. To do so, go to Settings > Brightness and restore the brightness to the default, or drag the slider to the left to lower the default screen brightness.