just noticed with iOS 26 that the swipe up does not close some apps, you have to use the three buttons, should be a way to reset and go back to the swipe up to close app if you do not do multi tasking, or is there another work around now.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: swiping up on apps
iPad Pro, iPadOS 26
In iOS 26, some apps may remain active when swipe‑up gestures are disabled for multitasking. Currently, the only workaround is to re‑enable full gesture controls in Settings > Home Screen & Multitasking > Multitasking Gestures and restart the device. This restores swipe‑up to close apps without needing the three‑button method.
Swiping up open app to turn them off does not work. Suggestions for how to swipe up to turn apps off also do not work. And these settings suggestions do not solve the problem. I now have 4 open and eternally active apps. I fear having 23 of them open in memory and then need to find the one that I need to use. This is unacceptable. In addition, simply swiping up or down a single page for reading is choppy/ jerky. Please fix these bugs in iOS 26.
Lots of misinformed comments in the thread. There ARE specific reasons why you may want to force close apps and this doesn’t have to do with multitasking. There are countless apps that can bug out and require a fresh re-run. This is can be app-side but without the ability to terminate it by force, you might be blocked from interacting with it.
Thankfully there are really helpful answers here as this is the top search result when looking up the problem. Still feels like an iPadOS 26 issue that persists in 26.1. This isn’t a problem in the iPhone which allows you to easily swipe up an app to terminate. There’s no reason to believe the behavior should be different on the iPad.
If you go to Settings > Multitasking & Gestures and select Full Screen Apps, all apps will open full screen and can be closed by swiping up.
Reboot your ipad. It solves the problem.
What setting?
Rarely works on my new iPad Air 2025.
Help. I can’t close all the open windows on my new iPad 26.2. I used to tap and close them but now I can’t. Please help, I don’t understand why all of the sudden this started.
Didn’t work for me.
Swipe up to close apps not working in iPadOS 26
