The iOS operating system on the iPhone has excellent RAM memory management, so we will rarely have to intervene to resolve the situation. However, there are cases where the iPhone slows down due to too many apps open in RAM or for some poorly optimized app that tends to use more memory than necessary. So if the iPhone seems to be a little slower than normal and if trying to open an app it doesn't start immediately, we will show you in this guide how to free up RAM memory on the iPhone quickly and quickly, without complicated or difficult procedures. to understand.
In this way we will be able to make the iPhone snappy even with many apps installed (very common scenario if we have been using the iPhone for many years without ever having manually optimized the RAM memory).
READ ALSO: speed up the iPhone and optimize iOS
Free up RAM memory on iPhone
The methods collected below can be applied on all recent iPhone models that have iOS 12 or later releases as the operating system. If we do not have at least iOS version 12, we advise you to proceed with the system update (if available) or to buy a new iPhone.Use the Home button on the close screen
For iPhones equipped with a physical Home button and still supported by Apple (iPhone 7 and iPhone 8), we can quickly free up the RAM by holding down the shutdown button with the screen unlocked and, as soon as the slide appears Scroll to switch off, press and hold the button Home at the bottom until the unlock code request appears.
If you now go to press twice on the Home button to see the applications running, you will notice that they are still present but that, by trying to open one, this will be reloaded from scratch as would be done by pressing on its launch icon. The only trick to note is that the iPhone must already be unlocked otherwise, by holding down the Home button, Siri will activate. In this way the iPhone's RAM memory will be immediately reinitialized and we will therefore be able to benefit from a faster speed than before.
Close unused background apps
Just like on Android, iPhone also allows you to access apps left active in the background, so you can close them manually when we notice an excessive slowdown of our phone. To do this, press twice on the Home button (up to iPhone 8) or scroll from the bottom edge to the center of the screen and hold down (on iPhone X and later) to open the switcher with all the active apps in the background.
From this menu we scroll left and right to view all the apps, then swipe upwards (starting from the app window) to close it permanently. To empty all the RAM memory we will have to repeat the steps for each window in the switcher, but this could lead to a delay in receiving notifications from the messaging apps: we therefore act only on the really unused apps, avoiding to close all the apps without criteria as happens on Android (where there is often a Close all button).
Prevent apps from running in the background
To avoid that one or more apps remain in RAM even after closing, we will have to act in the iPhone settings to correct this type of behavior. We open the Settings app, tap on the General menu and finally press on the Update app in the background item .
We can act in two different ways: completely block the execution of the apps in the background, setting the Update app in the background item to No, or remove the check marks from the apps that we consider superfluous and therefore we do not want them to always remain active in memory ( choose which we recommend).
Another method to change the behavior of the background apps is to open the Settings app, scroll to the end of the screen, click on the menu with the name of the app and finally remove the check mark next to the Update in the background item .
Obviously we will have to act critically, to avoid that even useful apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and Facebook cannot remain active in memory and send us notifications.
Uninstall unused apps
If we no longer use one or more apps, instead of deactivating the running in the background it is advisable to remove them completely, in order to save RAM and internal memory. To uninstall an app, simply hold down with the finger on one of the apps on the Home screens, then press on Rearrange the apps then tap on the X symbol on the top left corner of each uninstallable app (which at this stage vibrate).
The iPhone can automatically uninstall unused apps, thus freeing up RAM memory when necessary; to enable this feature, open the Settings app, tap on the iTunes Store and App Store menu, scroll down the screen and finally activate the Remove app item you don't use .
After activation, the iPhone will uninstall apps that have never been opened for a few months, so as to leave the RAM memory only for the apps we use frequently.
Reboot the device
As a last resort, we can free up RAM on the iPhone by turning the device off and on again, so we can free up the cache in memory and prevent the background apps that we have already optimized from starting. To turn off the device, hold down the Power button for a few seconds, then scroll the swipe Swipe to turn off to turn off the device. We wait 2 minutes, then press the Power button again until the Apple logo appears.
If not even the reboot resolves the problems of slowness of our iPhone, we advise you to proceed with a factory reset, as already seen in our guide on How to factory reset the iPhone and iPad by deleting and restoring the data .
Conclusions
The iPhone is a highly optimized smartphone and hardly needs to free up RAM memory to speed up the device (especially on the latest models). However, if we have an old iPhone still supported and we notice some slowdown (even sporadic), we apply one of the methods seen above to free up RAM memory on the iPhone and make the device return again as snappy as on the first start.If the methods described are not enough to speed up an old iPhone, we refer you to our article on How to get an old and slow iPhone back fast .
