If you find yourself forever swiping your apps closed on your iPhone in a bid to 'save battery life' then you've been wasting a lot of time - it's actually a common misconception.
It has come to our attention in recent days that this 'digital hygiene' hack is no more than the rumour mill gone wild and actually force quitting your apps may do your iPhone more harm than good.
Apple has in fact never advised closing background apps but this fact (which is news to us) has been circulating recently on social media, drawing our attention to it - how did we not know this?
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And once we did a bit of digging, we saw on Apple's support website that you should never force quit from the carousel unless an app has frozen.
It said: "When your recently used apps appear [when you double click the home button], the apps aren't open, but they're in standby mode to help you navigate and multitask. You should force an app to close only if it's unresponsive."
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Did you hear that? ONLY if it's unresponsive. Why did nobody tell us this sooner?
Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, reportedly confirmed this too, with his email response to the question being posted on Mac Rumours. He says closing apps is not vital to battery life.
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In fact, having apps open in the background is an easy way for your phone to bring an app to the forefront - opening it from scratch uses up more battery.
On a similar note for Android users, Google senior vice president Hiroshi Lockheimer once tweeted that force-closing Android apps "could very slightly worsen [device performance] unless you and algorithm are one (you kill something, system wants it back etc)."
Apple explains on its support site that there are just two main ways to save battery on your iPhone and force quitting isn't one of them.
The first is to dim the screen or turn on Auto-Brightness, or by turning on low-power mode, which is available on iOS 9 and upwards.
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So we're sorry if you enjoy swiping those apps away, thinking you're helping your phone last until the end of the day. Essentially, the multitasking app list simply details the last apps you used, allowing you to scroll through for convenience.
It's not there to stress you out and frantically make you quit them all on a daily basis - so we all just need to chill.
Featured Image Credit: Tyla