Apps Terminating in Background on iOS 26 [Solution] – Not Background App Refresh

Hi everyone,

I noticed a big issue after IOS 26 Update : whenever I switch apps, they get terminated within 10–15 seconds in the background. When reopening, the app restarts as if it’s launching from the beginning.

For example:

• On Safari, if I open Google and then switch to Facebook for about 20 seconds, when I return to Safari the page reloads completely from scratch.

• On ChatGPT or Google Gemini, if I’m typing a long prompt and a message notification comes in, I switch to reply. But when I return, half of my text is gone because the app was killed in the background.

I reported this issue in different places, but never got a proper solution. Even AI assistants couldn’t help me fix it.

The Solution I Found:

After a lot of trial and error, I discovered the problem. On iPhone, under Developer Settings, there is an option called Fast App Termination.

This was somehow toggled ON (I never enabled it). Because of that, apps were being force-closed in the background. After turning it OFF, the issue was completely resolved!

👉 Note: This has nothing to do with “Background App Refresh.” The real cause is the Fast App Termination setting, which seems to get enabled on some devices when upgrading to iOS 16/17/18 beta (iOS 26 beta in my case).

Now my apps stay alive in the background, and they no longer restart from the beginning. 🎉