How do you force close apps while on the phone?

No, it isn't a bug. You can only force close apps from the HOME screen when there are no active apps running. As the phone app is active you can't force close apps. There's a technical reason involving memory management that I won't bore you with.

But the bigger question, already raised by others, is why are you force-closing apps at all? There is no valid reason for doing so, and many reasons NOT to force close apps.

Just because you don’t think people should force close apps doesn’t mean others have to think that way. I’ve force closed apps for years whenever I don’t use them and haven’t had any issues. I don’t remember not being able to force close apps on other versions of iOS during phone calls, but it should be an available feature.

Force closing apps is something that only needs to be done if the app in question is misbehaving. In other words, rarely.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/03/10/should-you-quit-ios-apps-answer/

You can submit any feedback you have for Apple here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

SWAGNATIONS wrote:

but it should be an available feature.

You can submit your feedback to Apple here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

However, as Apple considers it more of an emergency measure, I doubt you'll see a change.

I currently have 140 apps open. It doesn’t create a problem in finding apps, because the most recently used apps are always moved to the “front” by iOS. Reasons not to close are that closing increases battery drain and slows down opening apps. I almost always launch apps from their icons on the Home screen, but when I am switching between a small number of apps I use the quick launch screen.

I believe they do things if the majority of customers want them to be done. I’m not saying a majority want this feature. I’m just going to continue to swipe up on apps I’m not using because I feel more organized that way.

SWAGNATIONS wrote:

If that were true, they wouldn’t have such a large customer base.

It really is true. They are just pretty good at figuring out what people need, rather than paying attention to what they ask for.

This also bugs me - especially because it is inconsistent. Sometimes I can force-close apps while on the phone, while at other times I cannot. As for those who say "there's no reason to force-close apps", we all understand the logic behind that - supposedly iOS does a good enough job at resource management that it will close apps if they need to be. However, some of us have reasons to want to do this. My own petty little reason is that when I'm playing Candy Crush and have full boosters (for winning 7 levels in a row), I can force-close the app before failing the next level, then re-open it and still have the boosters! I can do this when I'm not on the phone, but when I'm on a long, boooorrrring conference call and want to play a game while listening, I can't force-close. Like I said, petty reason, but the inconsistency still bugs me.

I experience the same thing. I want to close particular applications that use location continuously like navigation apps (Google maps, Waze, Uber, Lyft, etc,) to prevent them from draining my battery. I have experienced that each application using location, movement, etc. queries that information indecently and at different frequencies. In the past, the more of the applications you’ve had opened the greater the battery drain.

Has this changed with iPhone X?

It’s definitely a glitch that I’ve experienced as well. It’s my first day with the iPhone X and I couldn’t close out apps while on a phone call. I came across this post trying to figure out if it was something apple took away. I ended the call, then closed the apps and resumed my phone call. I tested it to see if I could close out apps while on the call again and sure enough I could. I spend a lot of time on the phone and I need to be able to close apps that ‘misbehave’ as someone else here put it. My Netflix & Hulu disconect from my tv after so long and the only way to reconnect it is rebooting the app. This is one annoying glitch, especially for a phone I’m not quite sure I’m sold on yet. I’ll possibly be switching back to my iPhone 7+.

I was having the same issue, with wanting to close apps while on a call one of my game apps has a glitch where if I close out of it I get to keep my goodies. Sometimes it’s Necessary and even the old phones allowed it to be done.

Thanks for the tip - I got it to work with a variation on these steps. Specifically:

1. Go to the Home screen (or any screen besides the Phone app)

2. Press the Lock button on the side of the phone

3. Wake the phone up

4. Unlock and go to Home screen

5. Now swipe up and hold to get to multitasking

6. Force-touch and swipe up on the app to close it

This is working for me consistently. Thanks again!

BajaShouta wrote:

Every app that uses data, and is open in the background, will continue to use data; whether background app refresh is on, or not.

No, that is not true. Any app that accepts notifications will wake up to process the notification, whether it appears on the multitasking screen or not. Killing it does not stop it from processing notifications. Thus, if you kill mail, it will still process all push and fetch downloads. You might be correct for streaming apps like Spotify or Apple Music, but technically they are not background processes, they are foreground, as you can see the controls for them in the Control Center when they are running. but only one streaming app will run at a time. Other apps in the multitasking screen do not run unless they are opened on the screen. In fact, most of them are not even in RAM memory. the 1 GB of RAM on most phones only has room for 3 or 4 apps, and the most recently used are the ones in RAM.

Mail service on a phone is literally a special exception. There are settings for how it updates itself, and how often. But, if you have Facebook, or Snapchat, up and running in the background of your phone, they will constantly ping their servers in order to keep themselves updated. If you force-close them, they will not; unless Background App Refresh is enabled.