Android 16 QPR1 Lets You Close All Your Apps Super Quick, But Should You?
Paul Jones / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2 includes a quality-of-life improvement that allows immediate swiping away of recent apps to close them.
- The update removes the delay caused by waiting for the app-closing animations to finish, so users can quickly swipe-close all their apps one after the other.
- Despite the performance improvement, habitual app-clearing offers little benefit and may drain your battery.
Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2 is here, and eager enthusiasts are digging into the update to discover all that is new. One change people have spotted includes a faster swipe through from the Recents menu, saving some time if you obsessively close all apps.
Reddit user ElectricalCulture764 noticed that swiping away apps in the Recents menu is now faster than ever before. Previously, when you opened a bunch of apps, went to Recents (swipe up and hold from the navigation pill), and tried to close the apps, you would have to wait for the full animation to complete before you could successfully swipe close the next app. The system would seemingly ignore touch input until the animation was finished.
With Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2, Pixel users can immediately swipe away all apps as fast as possible, as the system no longer waits for the animation to finish. You can catch a demo of this in the video below, courtesy of the Reddit user:
I tried it out on my Pixel 9 Pro XL running Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2, and it’s definitely as snappy as shown in the video above. On the other hand, my Pixel 7a running Android 16 stable cannot close apps as quickly.
While the change is appreciated, the elephant in the room is whether you should close all your apps like this. Closing all apps from the Recents switcher was prevalent in the early Android days, when the OS struggled with RAM management and phones came with tiny amounts of RAM.
However, Android is a lot more mature now regarding RAM management (even iOS is, for that matter), and devices now ship with plentiful RAM. Unless you have a low-end device, there’s little to gain from force-closing all your apps frequently with this swipe gesture, and you’ll end up using more battery when the app cold starts the next time. Instead, you should reserve this swipe force-closing only for misbehaving apps.
Do you notice a difference in app closing speeds in the Recents menu on Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2? Let us know in the comments below!
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