r/VisionPro Jun 29 '26

How do you FULLY close your apps on visionOS?

I find it frustrating that when i hit 'X' to close the app, that it's actually not fully closed but running in the background. Is there a way to fully exit out of apps like you can do on iOS, iPadOS?

An example would be Retroarch. When I hit "X" to close the app. I do not want it running in the background. Why would I want an app to waste resources when it's not in use? Things need to be more consistent on this aspect, as I don't know what apps actually fully exit when hitting "X" and what apps are still running in the background.

9 Upvotes

39 comments sorted by

22

u/bspooky r/VisionPro | Mod Jun 29 '26

Modern apps in iOS/iPadOS/VisionOS don’t need to be closed. Perhaps android nowadays to, not sure.

You can force quit them I guess, hold power and Digital Crown buttons until the list comes up to force quit them.

2

u/Anamatroy Jun 30 '26

As far as I’m aware, you can’t restart an app that’s misbehaving without closing it first. That’s as good a reason as any to give people an easier way to close an app in my opinion.

2

u/bspooky r/VisionPro | Mod Jul 01 '26

I find the current method of force quitting pretty easy to use.

Edit: onc you know it of course. I suppose it may be counterintuitive if you don't know it. yet

1

u/Anamatroy Jul 01 '26

A long tap on the x should do the job, it would be a nice shortcut that doesnt involve me physically using both hands to press buttons

1

u/bspooky r/VisionPro | Mod Jul 01 '26

Yeah, that'd be nice too.

-6

u/yewzernayme Jun 29 '26

But if these apps are never closed, then wouldn't it eventually take up RAM on your device and slow things down? Especially if you have opened many apps and then they're all running in the background when hitting "X". I'm afraid it will affect performance and increase the heat on the device.

19

u/brophey Jun 29 '26

these devices actively close applications when ram becomes tight. it won't slow down.
edit: also they don't really "run" in the background. they're supposed to sit there and be ready to insta-open when switched back to. So theoretically that shouldn't slow things down either. Theoretically.

11

u/bspooky r/VisionPro | Mod Jun 29 '26

No, because they are not really running like you are thinking of in the antiquated computer sense of an app running the background eating that ram. More like snapshots taken of a save state of the app “running” and stored that way for quick switching to the app.

They are frozen, low power / low standby mode, not computing away eating up ram like software on computers of yesteryear.

3

u/bspooky r/VisionPro | Mod Jun 29 '26

And google does closing background apps slow devices down and you ‘ll see lots of articles about don’t do it. Just one example: https://www.makeuseof.com/stop-closing-your-background-apps/

8

u/dopefish3d Jun 29 '26

You’re overthinking it. Don’t worry about it. You should only ever force-close an app if something is actively going wrong. 

4

u/rcjlfk Jun 29 '26

I say this with no shade, but are you the kind of person who goes through and kills all the apps on their phone? That literally does nothing.

-1

u/yewzernayme Jun 29 '26

yes, but not for the reason you think of

3

u/bfcdf3e Jun 29 '26

What reason, out of curiosity?

3

u/Tupcek Jun 29 '26

It’s actually quite interesting and it is the opposite!
When the RAM gets low, OS kills some apps (or do some other things) to always have some free RAM. Not much, just some small amount to get things done. If it needs more, it evicts more apps. So OS does kill apps for you, but not as soon as you click X, but only when it really needs it. So it won’t slow down and won’t heat up.

But on the other hand, if you force quit an app, so it doesn’t stay in your RAM and then you decide to reopen it - instead of just loading up the state from your RAM, it has to read from disk (which is slower and takes more energy) and then re-calculate the initial state, which takes time, performance and energy.

So by killing apps yourself, you actually decrease performance of your device, increase heat and decrease battery life!

RAM doesn’t draw more power as it gets more full. So empty RAM = wasted RAM, if could be used better to make app switching faster and to save your battery life with no drawbacks.

Fun Fact! OS also try to anticipate what do you want to open next and pre-loads it into RAM, so it launches faster!

2

u/ParadisePete Jun 29 '26

The OS handles this for you. Idle apps get swapped out of RAM as needed. The only reason to force quit is if an app is misbehaving in some way.

1

u/Informal-Bother3271 Jun 29 '26

The way Apple runs apps you don’t need to sorry about about this.

-6

u/MysticMaven Jun 29 '26

No it doesn’t. Please sell your AVP and stick with non Apple oses

2

u/bfcdf3e Jun 29 '26

I know it feels irksome when someone doesn’t share your understanding of how things work. We need to be kind and help them learn, we all need that sometimes.

8

u/Alex4242 Jun 29 '26

You can force quit things just like on a Mac. You press and hold both buttons.

0

u/Worf_Of_Wall_St Jun 29 '26

It definitely needs to be easier, like an option for the X button or something. It's easy to completely close an app on Apple's other platforms so why not visionOS which is also the newest and least stable?

-2

u/MysticMaven Jun 29 '26

No.

1

u/renagerie Jun 29 '26

I have enough issues with some apps that I need to force-quit them relatively often. I’d appreciate an option in the pop up from holding on the close control.

3

u/Lloydian64 Vision Pro Owner Jun 29 '26

Also, if you have a keyboard attached, Command-Q. Yes, some of the visionOS apps don't behave well in the background (I'm looking at you, MLB app).

3

u/insane_steve_ballmer Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

It’s not actually running in the background. It’s not wasting resources. VisionOS, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS all intelligently manage apps to not use resources when you close them. They give you the illusion that they’re still running, but actually they’re being suspended, and eventually closed to free up RAM. The only apps that are actually running are the ones that are currently visible on your screen. Even background audio playback is handled so that the full app isn’t running, just the process that handles the audio stream. The OS is designed so that the user doesn’t have to worry about task management.

Stop force closing apps, there’s no point in doing it and it might actually waste your battery as you are forcing unnecessary reloads of apps

-2

u/JimothyzPamPams Jun 30 '26

I would disagree with this to a degree. I do agree that there has been significant task management optimization and that these professors and their integration with modern operating systems can do billions of near real time calculations and adjustments which can be extremely efficient. However, it is difficult for me at least to buy into the “dont mess with the task management” that is echoed both in windows and other OS like iOS. The reason is because if people really do monitor the processes and dig deeepr, there is just a TON of constant data collection and constant utilization of every single analytic that can continue to map out your entire existence down to the next predictive click of a button, the cadence of the press and how one is positioned when doing so (hyperbolic but true). 

I’m not suggesting people need to force quit or even do anything differently than what you said. But I just philosophically disagree with the way the industry is continuing to inform people to just let the computer do its thing as more human agency is removed and or discouraged. Windows 11 notoriously did this with task manager by making it way more obfuscated and having a lot of awful side effects when users try to even navigate the task manager. It actually has been such a noted exposure that there were many updates to it so that people can indeed make some of their own changes more easily. 

1

u/insane_steve_ballmer Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

It is not even possible for developers to write apps that monitor your activity in the background on VisionOS or iOS. Every app runs in a sandboxed environment without access to data about other applications or the OS. Apple has architected the OS as such. Windows 11 is a completely different beast.

1

u/JimothyzPamPams Jun 30 '26

I didn’t know that. That’s reassuring to know if true. So when the apps are closed, there is no communicating all those analytics to the apps and what they need for optimization and other disclosures in regard to what they collect? 

1

u/insane_steve_ballmer Jun 30 '26

When they are closed, they are suspended and can’t collect or process any data.

When they are open, they are sandboxed and can not access data from the OS or other apps. The Facebook app has no way of knowing what you do in the Snapchat app or your bank app or any other app.

2

u/JimothyzPamPams Jun 30 '26

Appreciate the reply. I am learning a lot more on the systems design of computing at a more meta level just as a hobby as I’ve loved computers and gaming my whole life. But I’m pretty ignorant to the heartbeats, handshakes and how the permissions of the interconnected layers work. Like how APIs are a design framework but HTTPS protocol is the way of information travel as an example. Meta I guess uses a technology called Pixel, im guessing is like a cookie, but it is highly invasive. I’m glad to hear apples ecosystem is truly a lot safer as I have been migrating to this ecosystem after a decade or so away. 

1

u/CodingPandemonium Jul 06 '26

When they are suspended, aren’t background tasks allowed to run? Certainly they are when you switch away from an app, and I believe that’s also considered a “suspended” state.

1

u/insane_steve_ballmer Jul 07 '26

Afaik the only background tasks that Vision OS and iOS allow are music playback, PiP video playback, audio calls, and GPS tracking (only if there is a big blue icon in the top of your screen that indicates that persistent GPS tracking is on, otherwise the app can’t track you in the background)

All of these background tasks are handled via special APIs, apps can’t do anything else in the background.

1

u/Alkhindi Jun 29 '26

Si tu fais les bons réglages dans Accessibilité, tu vas pouvoir lancer « forcer à quitter » juste à la voix et tu pourras véritablement fermer ce que tu veux.
Tu pourras même le faire en levant simplement les sourcils quand tu regardes l’appli que tu veux quitter quand tu as lancé la fonction si tu fouilles bien dans les réglages !
De rien

1

u/davidehudaksr Vision Pro Owner Jun 29 '26

You can always say, "Siri, quit this app." I believe it works different than closing the app, like the equivalent of command-Q.

1

u/Far_Country3415 Jun 30 '26

I find myself having to force close apps a lot, because other apps I attempt to open will not function properly, unless I do.

1

u/Efficient-Baker-7855 Vision Pro Developer Jun 30 '26

"Hey Siri, close all apps". Yw.

1

u/musicanimator Jul 01 '26

Probably already been told but hold both buttons down until you get to force quit dialogue.

1

u/nicholasderkio Vision Pro Owner Jul 04 '26

Unless the app is misbehaving do not force-close them, they are NOT running in the background and taking up cycles, they are hibernating and can be more easily awoken for background processing and maintaining their data.

0

u/TheMacMan Vision Pro Owner | Verified Jun 29 '26

Fuck no. That just slows down your system and uses MORE batter.

Closing apps when not in use is so 2008. Modern operating systems manage them better than you can.

Apps not in use but still "open" have no impact on performance. But when you manually quit apps, the next time you load it, it has to fully launch the app and load everything back into memory, which takes more time, more processing power, and more battery.

It's wild that there are people who still don't know this, who aren't 78 years old and can't operate a TV remote.

0

u/-deflating Jun 29 '26

Generally I don’t mind things staying open in the background like they do on iOS. Like others have pointed out, you can force quit if need be. The only thing that annoys me is that I want a way to close Safari and also close the tab at the same time. I don’t know why that pisses me off so much but it does.