How to swipe to close apps on iphone 12

Even iOS apps occasionally misbehave — they can crash, or freeze, or otherwise stop working. If you’re new to iOS or just haven’t had this happen before, you may not know how to actually quit an app (as opposed to just swiping it off your screen). Here’s how to quit an app and, if you need to, shut down your phone. (We used a phone loaded with a beta of iOS 16, but this will work with earlier versions of the OS just as well.)

Quit an app

• Open the App Switcher by either swiping up from the bottom of the screen and then pausing in the middle or (if you have a Home button) double pressing the Home button.
• You’ll see an overlapping view of all your open apps. Swipe to the right or left until you find the app you want to quit.
• Swipe up on the app to close it.

Open the App Switcher and swipe sideways to find the app.

When you’ve found the misbehaving app, swipe it up to quit.

While there isn’t any way to close all of your apps at once, you can swipe off up to three apps at a time by using the appropriate number of fingers. Otherwise, if you’ve got a lot of apps running, you’ll have to simply swipe them off one at a time.

Shut down your phone

If, for any reason, swiping the app off doesn’t solve the problem, then shut down your phone by pressing and holding the side button and either volume button until you see sliders appear. Drag the one that says slide to power off to the right. (If you have an iPhone with a Home button, instead, press and hold the side or the Sleep / Wake button.)

You should then be able to restart it by using the power button.

If worse comes to worst and you can’t shut down your phone this way, you can force restart it. If you have an iPhone 8 or later:

• Quickly press and release the volume up button.
• Quickly press and release the volume down button.
• Press and hold the side power button. After a while, the screen should go black; keep holding the button until you see the Apple logo, which will indicate that the phone has restarted. You can then release the button.

Update September 1st, 2022, 10:11AM ET: This article was originally published on June 4th, 2021, and has been updated to add information on force restarting an iPhone.

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When Apple launched iPhones without Home buttons, a whole new set of gestures were introduced, changing the way that we were used to interacting with our iPhones.

One of these changes involved the App Switcher and the way open apps are found, with Apple introducing a gesture to reach the App Switcher on devices with a Home button.

How to close an app on iPhone X, XS, XS Max, XR, iPhone 11, 11 Pro, or 11 Pro Max, iPhone 12, 12 Mini, 12 Pro, or 12 Pro Max

1. At the Home screen of the iPhone, or while in an app, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause while still pressing the screen.
2. When the App Switcher comes up, swipe left and right through the different app cards to find the app that you want to close.
3. Use a quick swipe upwards to close the app.

Using this gesture exits out of an app and effectively closes it, which is useful if you need to restart an app for some reason. There's generally no need to close your apps to improve performance, though, as Apple has built-in management systems for dealing with all of the apps that you have open on your device.

Most apps that are not active are in a suspended state and are not using up any resources, but some apps can run in the background for a period of time if background refresh is activated.

According to Apple, force quitting an app will not improve your battery life, and it's possible that doing so can actually drain battery because it causes the ‌iPhone‌ to load it all over again.

Why won't my iPhone 12 Let me close apps?