Q: ios7 keeps refreshing apps after switching

My auto-Brightness was off until this morning when I decided to switch it on.

Later I started noticing the refresh problem in both safari and a couple of apps. So I ended up at this thread looking for a solution when, hey presto my brain kicked in!  I was sure I hadn't had this problem before I turned on auto-brightness, so turned it off, did a couple of tests and the problem had gone.

All I can suggest if your A/B is already off try switching it on, then off again or look for other settings that have a similar function.

Hope this helps

I expect the auto brightness is adjusting the screen refresh. I found it a bit on iOS 6 too that auto brightness makes apps refresh more often.

Regardless there definitely is a link between the two.

6 months, 44000 views, and over 600 posts (on this thread alone) later, has there been any progress on this? I've already decided I won't be buying anymore Apple products. I suppose I can be swayed if this is fixed by the time I need a new device, but even then, this is such bs that it hasn't been addressed I probably won't on principle. I've tried all the "tricks" that have been suggested, nothing helps. It's really disappointing.

Well the iPad Air was asleep all day. Came into Safari and was still logged in and could reply without the page refreshing so the Auto brightness made all the difference for mine.

Hi lforbes, glad the turning off the auto bright seems to have worked for you too.

I'm no techie, but I've been thinking about what the possible connection could be and the only thing I can think of is,  maybe the program that runs the auto bright pings the ambient light sensor continuously to check for changes in the light so it can make the adjustment when required, which perhaps causes the refresh when it does.

Or maybe it is just the ambient light sensor refreshing and causing everything else to refresh.

I'm sure if neither of my theories are possible someone more savvy will set me straight.

@Foldingsoup101. If we had the same wallpaper zoom issue, 7.1 fixed it but I had to goto the settings and re select my picture.

I'm not sure if some you of you have the problem of apps showing old visits on the multitasking screen. Safari sometimes show me pages I've visited and closed days ago.  (I started to believe it depends on the app I'm switching from, and if it's the same I used that previous time, if u understand what I mean)

This is driving me crazy and I hate it!

lforbes: I got the same as you, on my iPhone 4S…

With auto brightness already ON:

• Went to Twitter app, opened a link. Switched away to another app, after 30 seconds switched back: Twitter refreshed.

Turned OFF auto brightness:

• Went to Twitter app, opened the same link. Switched away to another app, after 30 seconds switched back: Twitter did NOT refresh.

Turned ON auto brightness:

• Went to Twitter app, opened the same link. Switched away to another app, after 30 seconds switched back: Twitter did NOT refresh.

For me the two are definitely linked. I will see how long it lasts and then if the same happens when I turn auto brightness off.

I have attempted to toggle auto brightness on and off, and off and on, and on and off and on, all to no avail. My apps still refresh regardless of how briefly I've been "out" off the app.

This drives me nuts in Safari and the Google Maps app. If I search for directions in Google Maps, then switch to my email or Yelp for two seconds to check something, Google Map immediately refreshes and I lose all my traffic information. For me it seems the only apps that do not refresh (or at least as frequently) are Mail and a few games.

This is absolutely ridiculous and is putting me off any future Apple mobile devices!!

All this messing about with the brightness seems to have made it worse for me.  Now the individual tabs in both Safari & Chrome will auto-refresh just by switching between them!  I used to have to switch to an entirely different app to make this happen.

This placebo. Does not work and does not do worse.

Hi augratin, sorry it has caused you more issues.  It has definitely worked for me & a couple of others from what I can tell.

If it has made things worse for you, surely that is indicative that the two are connected in some way?

I was just pointing out correlation; it was premature of me to suggest they are connected. We'd need a larger sample size to draw such a conclusion.

There is a correlation. The question remains what other memory based settings also have to be disabled. Regardless Apple must get off their high horse and fix this issue before I will buy another iOS product.

I turned my AB off then waited a few days to do any kind of testing so that any near-term effects of memory clearing, etc., would be minimized.  Turning Auto-brightness off has had no effect on the behavior I've seen on my 4s running 7.1.  Here's what I did.  I didn't do a fresh restart of my phone, didn't close out any apps, etc. - just normal day-to-day activity.

I started Safari and opened three tabs: a cnn.com article, an amazon.com product, and a yahoo.com article.  I switched to the first page (cnn.com) to make sure Safari wouldn't refresh (it didn't).

I loaded up Paper, the Facebook app, and loaded a single post.

I loaded up Google Maps, chose a saved location, then had it calculate the driving route to that location.

I returned to Safari and the cnn.com article refreshed.  I switched to the other two pages and they also each refreshed. 

I returned to Paper - the app refreshed.  This is typical behavior for me.

I returned to Google Maps. The app refreshed and my route was gone.  Typical (frustrating) behavior.

I returned to Safari.  The first article/page refreshed. I scrolled up/down to load the content.  I switched to each of the other two pages and they each refreshed. I scrolled up/down to load their page content (mostly text a couple pics on one of the pages).  I returned to the first Safari page and it refreshed. Returning to each of the other two pages caused subsequent refreshes.

Cycling through the other two apps (using the double-home-press task switch mechanism) resulted in app refreshes on Paper and Google Maps.

I'm going back to turning AB back on - at least my iPhone handles auto-brightness correctly.  These last few days with it off have been a pain, having to pull up my brightness settings via the swipe-up control panel.

Thanks for giving us hope, though.  But alas, this didn't do anything for me.

Next post: iPad Air fail - don't get your hopes up thinking a new iDevice will behave much better...