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How to Close Apps on the HTC One M9

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Despite looking nearly identical to the most released last year, HTC’s new One M9 is one of the fastest and most powerful smartphones available today, and as a result users will end up multi-tasking and using a lot of apps throughout the day. With 3GB of RAM and plenty of processing power you can run multiple apps at once, switching between them as you’d like, and here we’ll explain how to close or clear apps on the HTC One M9.

Doing something as easy as clearing or closing unused apps may seem so general and simple for average users, but the first time smartphone owner or iPhone converts will need to know how to perform such a task on their new HTC One M9.

Read: 12 Best HTC One M9 Cases

After being announced on March 1st the HTC One M9 was finally released on April 10th from most carriers in the United States, and around the globe. Since then we’ve received a lot of questions (and answered plenty) and one of them is regarding closing any running apps on your device. Read on to find out how to stop apps one at a time, or close them all at once.

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The general rule of thumb when it comes to Android is to let the operating system manage your memory, not to mention the One M9 has 3GB of RAM and can multi-task with the best of them. That means there’s no reason it can’t handle tons of apps open at once. That said, there are still times a user may want to clear apps from memory that aren’t being used.

Google’s Android OS does an excellent job managing apps and multi-tasking unlike any other operating system by putting apps in a low-power state ready to be called into action when needed, and saving battery the rest of the time. Then you can multi-task and switch to and from apps with the app-switching button in seconds, for a smooth yet efficient experience. However, many users still opt to close apps manually and here’s how to do it.

Instructions

Clearing apps out of memory or the multi-tasking menu on the HTC One M9 is actually extremely easy, and similar to models before it, or most Samsung devices. Right on the screen there’s a back, home, and square icon. That last one, the overlapping squares is the multi-tasking or app switcher button.

Simply tap the overlapping square-like button on the bottom right of the display. This is the multi-tasking menu key that brings up all currently used and running apps. For those that didn’t know, switching from Gmail to YouTube, then to the browser, and back to Gmail is extremely fast and efficient with this button. However, this is also where a quick swipe will close and kill apps.

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The image above is what you’ll be greeted by once you tap the multi-tasking menu key, which shows all currently running apps. They are all small tiles and here you can see my starting to swipe away the YouTube app, closing it and turning it off from running in the background. It’s a good idea to leave things like phone, messages, or even the browser in here, especially if you use these often. Clearing the SMS text app only means it will need to restart on your next incoming message, wasting battery and CPU cycles. This same rule applies to all apps, so only close the ones you won’t be needing anymore. Big things like Maps, Navigation, or CPU-intensive games.

Read: 15 Best HTC One M9 Accessories

A simple swipe of your finger on each tile will swipe them away, and instantly close the app. Any saved progress or website you may be on will have to reload next time you use that specific application. The image above shows the menu, and us swiping to clear something. That’s it, you’re all done. It is that simple to clear and close apps on the new HTC One M9.

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However, if you’re about to head into work and won’t be using your device or are going to bed for the night, you can opt to tap the circled “X” at the top of the screen, which is the “close all” button. This will close every single app currently running in the recent apps menu, leaving you with a blank slate as shown above.

Killing all of your apps could end up slowing down the phone, as it will need to reboot certain apps as they are called, and in the end lower battery life. So again, only clear what’s necessary, and generally this menu and killing all apps isn’t needed as much as many users think. I rarely do it myself, except to close things like a game or Google Navigation.

You can also click the three-dots button which is menu, head into settings, and change the layout from the HTC-style grid view into something like the “card view” that comes with stock Android. This is our preference, but to each his own. That’s all you need to know about closing apps on the One M9, now enjoy that new aluminum smartphone.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Ahmed ali

    12/16/2015 at 9:44 am

    So what I understand is like we should not clear recent apps regularly bcoz it has negative impact on CPU

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