A former Apple Genius has said that closing apps manually that are running in the background actually uses up more battery than leaving them run in the background.

Scotty Loveless, who worked as a Genius for Apple solving technical problems for customers for two years, says that closing apps on a regular basis makes your battery life worse.

Loveless explained why this phenomenon happens:

"By closing the app, you take the app out of the phone's RAM. While you think this may be what you want to do, it's not. When you open that same app again the next time you need it, your device has to load it back into memory all over again. All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone," Loveless wrote.

He went on to say that background apps is something that your phone is already looking after.

"Plus, iOS closes apps automatically as it needs more memory, so you're doing something your device is already doing for you. You are meant to be the user of your device, not the janitor."

Loveless' claims goes against the common belief that closing your apps will help improve battery and performance. Based on the point that a) it will be doing less strenuous tasks and b) it will be using less memory.

"The truth is, those apps in your multitasking menu are not running in the background at all: iOS freezes them where you last left the app so that it's ready to go if you go back."