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Home > Tips > How To Use Background App Refresh On iPhone and iPad

How To Use Background App Refresh On iPhone and iPad

In this article I will be telling you all about background app refresh and how should you use it.

Updated Nov 04,2016 | by Mike

The worldwide gadget company Apple has reached to a complete new level of sophistication and flexibility when we talk about its products' features. We have seen an era of revolutionalization of mobility and technology. 


Along the top racers in Apple products' "Features Catalogue" is the background app refresh technology. I've always been very disturbed by people advising to use this feature as trick to save battery life, without actually telling the readers what background app refresh is. In this article I will be telling you all about background app refresh and how should you use it. 


What is background app refresh: 


You might have noticed that since Facebook, the generation of server-end services have been in the spotlight. By 2010, server-end applications were the new bomb in smartphone technology. Server-end means the service or the app will show you the data only when you want it and only what you want to see. 


Instead of pre-loading, the service loads a general setup and then waits for you to do something and then loads that web application that you wanted to see. Here in lied the dilemma that it would take time to retrieve information from server and make it presentable to the user. 


Apple brought out the background app refresh technology to tackle this problem. Application that use this feature are not fully shut down, instead they are put on a hibernation mode where they keep refreshing themselves for new data. 


For instance, snapchat uses the background app refresh feature. When you close it down, it leaps into a state of hibernation where it keeps refreshing it's feed and downloads new stories. So when you click open that app again, you won't have to wait for a blank screen to fill up with posts, they will already be loaded for you. 


How to use background app refresh:


Background app refresh is a brilliant feature in a way that your applications show you the data in a blink. Though a disadvantage is that because it stays partially open and uses internet to refresh, your data and battery consumption are huge.


For starters, you should allow background app refresh only for those application that you use very often. Like Facebook app, snapchat, twitter, Instagram, maps and other such. These are the application that need to load faster so you don't have to wait.


But applications like games, news application (if you don't read them often) and other leisure application should not use background app refresh. It's not really a problem if you wait 5 seconds for clash of clans to fully load instead of two seconds. The impact on battery and cellular network data by turning background app refresh on or off is huge.


Check which apps you need to put off background app refresh


First you need to know which third-party applications are using the background app refresh feature. You also need to know which app uses the most battery power.


Go to "settings--> general--> Background App Refresh", here you can see whether the background app refresh feature is turned on and which app use the feature.


Then, go to "settings--> battery--> Battery Usage", here you will be able to see the battery usage of each application. You can see the record of last 24 hours as well as battery usage record of last 7 days. Now you can determine which app is using a lot of battery and is not of priority to you.


Turning off the Background App Refresh:


Now that you know which unwanted third-party apps are draining your battery, you can optimize your battery and cellular data usage. Simply go to "settings--> general--> Background App Refresh". You can turn off the background app refresh feature completely by flipping the switch labelled "Background App refresh."


Or you may only turn off background app refresh for those app which you don't very often. From the list below the "Background App Refresh" switch, turn off the switches for those app that you don't want using Background app refresh, and you're good to go.!



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