ios7 keeps refreshing apps after switching

Actually, I just made it happening and this was really interesting:

• Test Start
  • Apps: Process Tracker, PODCaster, Mail
  • Free Memory: 172 MB
  • Status: No Resets
• Second Test
  • Apps: Process Tracker, PODCaster, Mail, Browswer with three pages open
  • Free Memory: 62 MB
  • Status: No Resets
• Third Test
  • Apps: Process Tracker, PODCaster, Mail, Browswer with three pages open, Maps running a GPS
  • Free Memory: 36 MB
  • Status: No Resets
• Fourth Test
  • Apps: Process Tracker, PODCaster, Mail, Browswer with three pages open, Maps running a GPS, Weather
  • Free Memory: 113.5 MB
  • Status: Maps running GPS was closed in the background and GPS was lost (app basically reset when I switched to it).
• Fifth Test:
  • Apps: Process Tracker, PODCaster, Mail, Browswer with three pages open, Maps running a GPS, Weather
  • Free Memory: 41.2 MB
  • Status: After restarting the Maps, everything seems stable and staying up
• Sixth Test:
  • Apps: Apps: Process Tracker, PODCaster, Mail, Browswer with three pages open, Maps running a GPS, Weather, App Store
  • Free Memory: N/A
  • Status: Process Tracker App crashed, but when restarted Maps was again pushed out of memory and memory. Memory was at 32, started Maps with GPS, memory dropped to 9 for a second, and then went back to 34.

I kept repeating more tests that continued to take Maps down by adding more tabs in the browser and then opening more apps. Eventually as I was doing thing, more apps got taken down in the background, including Weather. Eventually it also reset my tabs and despite getting down to just the original few apps.

From what I can tell, there is a threshold that is passed when IOS decides it needs some free memory. In order to do so, it shuts down some app or part of an app in order to get space, even though it shows as running in the background. So despite showing when scrolling through running apps, the app is actually removed from memory, hence the "reset" we are all seeing. IOS has some code that decides what to take down and gives preferences to some apps over others. Eventually, something gets stuck in memory and everything keeps geeting closed in order to free up memory.

I believe this is the "as designed" feature noted above. IOS is trying to manage the memory on the device effectively. Unfortunately, how it is doing so is by deciding what it wants to throw out of memory without any preference of the user or consideration for which app the user was last in. For instance, I would always give my Map, Mail, and Browswer Apps priority, in that order. But since I cannot decide that and I answer a text while watching a video, the Browswer gets reset to give memory to the other applications and background processes I cannot see (there is ~230 MB of Wired processes that are not related to any app).

Good testing babsonnexus. I did some basic testing of features on ipad mini. I turned off all the fu fu stuff under general. Like Siri, gestures, spotlight search, etc. it seems the refresh is much fewer and farther between. Someone else try this and confirm or deny this preliminary work around. I have 22 apps open and three tabs in safari. Gmail app seems to refresh more often than any other. Safari only once in 30 mins of tinkering.

I recently took the plunge and upgraded from a 4s to a 5s. Though I hated to spend the money, I can honestly say that this refresh issue rarely occurs. Today I opened safari to an old browser page and realized I had to click the refresh button to see the new content. It had been over 24 hrs since I had last looked at the page.

I won't say that the problem never occurs. However, it is noticeably infrequent even with a lot of app switching.

iOS7 was extremely fristrating on the 4a. Much more usable on the 5s. I still get the feeling it has something to do with available memory and iOS7 being more of a memory hog.

All of my devices that upgraded to iOS 7 is refreshing even when I go from one tab to another in safari. I will scroll down about 10 paragraphs or 5 screen pages down then want to look up something on the web from the article so I open a new tab and find some additional info. When I go back to the original tab to continue reading it refreshes to go back to the top.

I have something in the shopping cart and go copy my credit card info in 1password then come back and it has refreshed so my info has to be entered again. If I have not memorized the expire date or security code and I have to look it up then it will refresh and drop my card number to start all over again.

This iOS 7 which is supposed to multitask has me multitasking instead (having to go get my wallet or look up something else on my iphone when using the ipad). I can't seem to multi-app let along multitask at all on my ipad without it refreshing and making me start all over. It is worse than it was before. Please give me mono tasking again or that option until this is resolved.

AHHHHHH! Please fix.

Thanks, puskarich - now we know of at least two examples where an iPhone 5s does NOT have the problem, or only minimally has it. On the iPad side, I can't remember if we've had reports of the iPad Air not having the problem.

I sure hope this doesn't turn out to be one of those things where you just have to upgrade to the very latest model if you want iOS 7 to work properly.

Since yesterday, I have used my phone to just open webpages, use mail, and listen to podcasts. Nonetheless, I started to get the webpage tabs to refresh after leaving them alone for a few seconds. I checked the memory and sure enough wired memory is now in the 350-390 MB range, leaving less than 50 free most times. As such, nothing can get in to memory, causing the refresh.

From above, after my restart I had 230 MB in wired memory. As such, sysem processes have expanded by nearly 70% (just by being on) and will not leave memory.

Why people are seeing this issue far less in newer devices must therefore be due to the larger amount of onboard memory. The question then becomes, why does so much move in to wired memory and stay there? This is not a question of IOS7 not having enough memory because a reset proves that even a 4S has enough on board to run it. The issue is that IOS7 keeps adding processes to wired memory and does not release them, leaving less and less available until nothing works. The only solution right now is to keep rebooting on a daily basis or as needed.

Now I need an app that can do an auto-reset on a daily basis, but that does not seem to exist. 😟

However, I do believe there is a coding solution to get this memory released from whatever is bloating it while IOS7 runs.

Alas, it wasn't fixed in either 7.0.3 or 7.0.4. Still happens and is especially annoying in Safari, Facebook, Words With Friends and iBooks. I use each one often and want to just go back to the screen I was on when I moved to another app, e.g. Messages, momentarily.

I tried this Solarc and didn't get any better results. After disabling a lot of those extraneous services and rebooting my phone, it would still force a refresh if I only had three apps in use (Safari, Facebook, and Google Maps). I also just tried freeing up over 3 GB of storage on the device since I was getting fairly low, but with no change/improvement in behavior. I'm going to download some sort of process manager to see if I can get any more detail about my device memory.

It seems to almost be getting worse on my device. The other day I had a website up where I was entering my billing information. The app would crash when I'd get to a particular point on the page where I began entering my credit card. It did this 3 times in a row until I decided to start from the bottom up on the form.

I took a trip last week and this issue was absolutely maddening. It makes the map apps all but useless unless you avoid multitasking altogether until you get to your destination. I have yet to hear anything back at all from Apple Support since the first time they asked for logs a few weeks ago.

Not being able to switch tasks when navigating is a good example against the "working as designed" claim.

If that's the way it is (due to lack of RAM, or whatever), it's debatable whether iOS 7 should even have been released for some of the older devices. Regardless, personally I'd be placated if I was just able to revert to iOS 6.

I have this same issue and had posted a couple of other threads before finding this one. Like many people with this problem I have a mini that I upgraded to ios7. I've tried all the reset and restore options won no luck. I had my Genius Bar appointment and was told like many it's how it's supposed to work.

I'm pretty sure this is memory related and I've been using various different memory managers to see if I could get a decent picture of the issue.

As far as I can tell my ipad mini has 502mb ram - at any given point I have between 300 and 350 mob available to me (shows as used memory in most software) where of that 350mb 30% is wired and can't be moved leaving 200 or so active /inactive/free.

Once I open one or two apps free drops down to single digits.

From my understanding what this means is that the only option for launching new apps at this point is to clear the inactive then active memory allocations. Hence when you. One back to one of those apps they have to restart and. Liam new memory.

What's confusing me is that I thought that iOS was supposed to save the memory state it moved out to disk resulting a slower resume but a resume all the same. I see absolutely no difference in my disk usage when I switch between apps - it's 100% constant even when my memory footprint is changing.

Could it be we've always had slower app switching on the minis due to memory constraints but apple broke the memory - disk- memory process ?

Maybe we also see it more as the 200mb ram I can't see or use I assume is the OS and this might be bigger than ios6 ?

This sentence " Hence when you. One back to one of those apps they have to restart and. Liam new memory. " should read :

Hence when you switch back to one of those apps they have to restart and.claim new memory.

Guess im wrong on this - no paging to disk on ios : https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/Man agingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html

So this has got to come down to the fact that maybe there is much more wired memory being used sand maybe the ios reserved memory are significantly more greedy in ios 7 ?

I have an Ipad Air 32gb wifi, IOS 7.0.4, and the problem is really persistent and annoying...

64GB WiFi iPad Air and 64GB iPhone 5, both on on ios 7.0.4, both have this problem. Glad I found this thread. I assumed it was normal behavior, but I could have sworn apps kept their state in ios 6, at least on the iPhone. Sure hope they address this. Really ***** with games that don't auto-save frequently and restart in the background forcing me to replay a section I previously finished.

I'm guess I'm sort of encouraged that the problem is clearly present in the iPad Air, even with its additional system memory. This does suggest that the problem is universal (if perhaps worse on older models, in addition to the sluggishness many experience on these). In turn, this suggests that Apple are far more likely to address the problem.

I went into an Apple reseller on Friday on the off-chance that anyone had heard about the problem. I'm sure you've guessed the answer already. Anyway, the very helpful tech person did suggest I phone an Apple Store who would probably put me directly in touch with Apple support.

I'll report back next week.