A New Way to Switch between Apps on Your iPhone

Did you know there’s more than one way to switch between apps on your iPhone? Everyone is familiar with swiping up to access the app carousel to switch between apps, but there’s another little-known method for changing apps while the apps stay the size of the full screen as if they are opened.

This alternative makes multitasking smoother and more efficient, especially if you’re repeatedly referencing multiple apps for tasks like copying and pasting from one to another.

Here’s a new way to switch between open apps on your iPhone. In the example above, the Shortcuts app is open. Notice the black bar at the very bottom of the screen. Most apps will have a black or white bar in the same location. Simply swipe left or right on the black bar to move to the next app.

Unlike the app carousel, the apps will remain the full screen size, and it’s much faster as you don’t have to tap on the thumbnail in the carousel to make the new app active.

This navigation method also works from your Home Screen. Swipe right across the very bottom of your screen to reveal the open apps rather than swiping up.

While this little-known or overlooked feature isn’t a huge difference from the more widely used method for switching between apps, it does have its advantages. For one, it reduces the number of gestures required when you’re switching between two apps to complete a task, making it almost effortless to go back and forth to cross-reference information between two apps, or even just to quickly check something in the last app you had open.

Further, switching apps by swiping left or right across the bottom of the screen reduces the natural tendency to close apps. As we recently learned, iOS is designed for apps to remain open when not in use. Repeatedly opening and closing apps actually reduces battery life and uses more system resources than leaving the app open in the background.

A surprising number of us at iDrop News were unaware of this feature, which left us with the thought that it might be new to many of our readers, too. Now that you know, will you change the way you switch between apps on your iPhone?