How Closing Apps on Apple TV Works
Closing apps on the Apple TV works very much like the app switcher on an iPhone, which appears when you double-click the Home button or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
As with the iPhone, you should only need to close an app on your Apple TV if it freezes or isn’t working properly. You don’t need to close apps in the background for any other reason: they don’t use power and it doesn’t hurt to keep them in the background forever.
Follow along with our step-by-step tutorial to learn how to open and use the app switcher on an Apple TV to close any misbehaving apps.
How to Close Apps on Your Apple TV
To open the app switcher, double press the Siri Remote’s TV button. The dedicated TV button is located right next to the Back button on the new Siri Remote that ships with the second-generation Apple TV 4K (model year 2021). On older remotes, the TV button is next to the Menu button.
The app switcher displays a row of large thumbnails representing each of the open apps, making it easy to quickly switch between recently used apps without having to return to the home screen.
Now swipe horizontally to bring the app you wish to close into the center of the screen, then swipe up on the Siri Remote’s touch-sensitive surface to push it off the top of the screen. Doing so will force the highlighted app to close, purging it from the memory and freeing up system resources.
To use this app again, simply launch it from the Home Screen like you normally would.
To leave the app switcher, press the Back button on the new Siri Remote or the Menu button on the original Siri Remote model.
When Should You Close Apple TV Apps?
Try to not develop a habit of swiping away all the apps in the app switcher. The tvOS operating system manages memory dynamically, ensuring apps run optimally in the background. There are, however, certain situations that may warrant nuking an app out of orbit. If the Netflix app freezes or stops working properly, for instance, closing and re-opening it could be a quick fix.
Sometimes one of your open apps may slow your Apple TV down in the background. In that case, you may indeed want to swipe away all the apps in the multitasking app switcher. Also, some people may prefer to close certain apps for privacy reasons. For instance, I regularly close the Candy Crush app when finished playing so that my significant other can’t tell I’ve been swapping colored pieces of virtual candy all night long.
