After my last post on taming the Safari “Tab-alanche,” I had several teachers ask the million-dollar follow-up question(I did kind of expected this…):
“That Safari trick is great, but can we do the same thing for all the open apps? When I pick up an iPad, there are 45 different apps open in the background from the last three days!”
So seeing as i have a name for the Tab-alanche, let’s call this the “The Swipe-nado.”
I know, cheesy, but bear with me 🙂
It’s that dizzying moment when you double-click the Home button on older iPads (or swipe up for all you newer device owners) and get caught in a swirling storm of Minecraft for Education, GarageBand, Keynote, Safari, and Photos. All have been here for days, spinning around from previous users.
It feels like walking into a classroom where every single textbook, workbook, and art project has been left open on every single desk. Oh and none of the pencils or markers have been tidied away either.
So remember this:
“Handing a student an iPad with 20 open apps is like letting them sit at a desk piled high with the previous student’s unfinished art projects. They aren’t going to look at the maths; they’re going to look at the mess.”
The big question now is: Can we set a timer to automatically close these apps, just like we did with Safari tabs?
The Short Answer: No (Sorry!)
The long answer is: No, because Apple doesn’t think we need to.
Unlike Safari tabs, which are actively loading information from the internet, iPadOS is designed to handle background apps very efficiently. When a student switches away from an app, the iPad essentially “freezes” it in place. It’s not actively draining the battery, and it’s not using up much brainpower (RAM).
Because of this design philosophy, Apple has not given us a simple “Auto-Close Apps After One Day” button in the Settings menu.
The Teacher’s Reality vs. Apple’s Philosophy
While Apple is technically correct that these background apps don’t slow down the iPad much, they forget the classroom factor: Students and Distraction.
If little Timmy is supposed to be doing maths, but he enters the Swipe-nado and sees that the last user left Angry Birds open, guess where Timmy’s brain is going?
The Alternatives: How to Manage the Mess
Since we can’t flip a magical switch to close apps automatically, here are the three ways to stop the Swipe-nado in a shared iPads classroom.
1. The Classroom Routine (The Manual Fix)
Since we can’t automate it, we have to operationalise it. Make “clearing the deck” part of your classroom routine.
- The “Exit Ticket” Swipe: Before students return iPads to the cart, their “exit ticket” is to show you a clear screen. They must double-click the home button and swipe away the tornado until nothing is left. This is also the apraoch I use in my Pre-Prep Tech Team activity and before the end of the lesson w echekc each device carefully.
- Device Monitors: Assign two reliable students as the “Swipe Squad” for the week. Their job is to check the iPads at the end of the day and swipe close any lingering apps.
2. The “Nuclear Option” (For IT Managed Schools)
Note: This requires your school’s Tech Department to set it up. and manage
If your school uses “Shared iPad Mode” (where students have specific logins or use a “Guest” session), the problem solves itself.
When a student logs out of a Shared iPad session, the iPad wipes everything clean for the next user. It closes all apps, clears all data, and resets the device. If the Swipe-nado is a massive issue for you, ask your IT department if “Shared iPad” mode is an option for your cart.
3. Prevention: Guided Access
If the issue is that students keep switching out of the educational app they should be in to look at what other apps are open, stop them before they start.
Use Guided Access (triple-click the home or power button after setting up) to lock the student into the one single app they are supposed to be using. If they can’t leave the app, they can’t enter the Swipe-nado! And yes, I will write a follow-up article on this later!
For the Tech Team: The Background
Feel free to forward this technical note to your IT Coordinator or IT Director at school.
The Question: Teachers want a configuration profile or setting that forces the iPad to kill background applications after a set duration (e.g., every night at midnight, or after 4 hours of inactivity) similar to the Safari > Close Tabs frequency setting.
The MDM Reality: As of current iPadOS frameworks, there is no MDM payload or restriction key that allows an administrator to force-close background applications based on time or inactivity for standard deployments. The operating system manages app life-cycles dynamically and does not expose this control to MDM.
The only automated solution is “Shared iPad” mode. Utilising Temporary Sessions in Shared iPad mode ensures that the user environment, including running state and local app data, is destroyed upon user logout. If teachers are demanding a clean slate every time a student picks up a device, transitioning the cart to Shared iPad mode is the only architectural answer.