How do I close an app instead of sending it to the background?

November 23, 2021

Before instructing how to close an app via eye control on the TD Pilot, it is important to understand that closing apps is not necessary.  It is a common belief that you should close apps running in the background to improve performance and save battery life but this is not true in almost all situations.  You should only close an app if it is misbehaving (not working right or frozen) or if it is using up battery (as per Settings / Battery) and you don't need it at the present time.  Some reasons NOT to close apps are:

  • Apps are not actually running in the background, they are suspended.
  • It does not help battery life.  (To understand how app affect battery use there is an interesting article at https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-13511 )
  • It does not make your phone faster (it actually makes it slower, because it takes longer to initialize an app from storage than to restart it from a suspended state).
  • It does not clean up RAM.  iOS manages RAM.  There is nothing a user can do to help it.
 Now, if your app is misbehaving or is frozen, please follow these steps to close the app.
  1. Select the AccessibleTouch menu
  2. Choose App Switcher
  3. Select the AccessibleTouch menu again
  4. Select Scroll
  5. Choose Scroll Down
  6. Select the app you want to close from the App Switcher