"Close" or "exit" Ipod Touch apps?

[paulcapewell]

I have a few extra apps - MobileScrobbler for example - and am wondering how to 'close' a running app? I presume that all apps run in the background and therefore can eat up battery. Sometimes it would be useful to 'turn off' an app.

Is this possible without uninstalling it?

[Shrimpy]

Yes this is true that apps do run in the background, and simply hitting the "home" button will not close them, it basically just minimizes it in a way.

To fully close the app you need to hold the home button for about 5 seconds or so until it returns to the main springboard, meaning the app has closed.

[paulcapewell]

Ah, thanks for that. So when you're in an app and hold Home, it closes that particular app until you re-open it?

Thanks.

[BlackWolf]

unfortunatly, there's no "clean" way to end apps on the touch since apple designed it for the apps that come with it and they can run in the background without doing any harm.

if you have your touch jailbroken (and it seems like you do) you can install a program called "SysInfo" through the installer. this program shows you all processes running on your touch right now and you can kill the processes via SysInfo.

killing a process via SysInfo is the same as holding the home button (at least that's what I think). unfortunatly, this isn't a very clean/nice way to end processes, but it's the only way right now.

[paulcapewell]

Thanks, that's also useful to know. :)

[DerekVOF]

I think that just "suspending" the applications allows the iPod Touch to use less battery and be more responsive. Of course, Apple also didn't probably expect people to be installing hundreds of applications :) I usually just suspend rather than Force Quit - doesn't seem to effect things one way or the other in my experience...