How to close all apps at once on your iPhone or iPad in iOS 8 [Jailbreak Only]

BY Jason

Published 6 Dec 2014

Multitasking

Ever since Apple introduced multitasking in iOS 4, one of the hotly debated topics has been whether closing apps running in the background can help preserve battery life or it makes it worse.

While you shouldn’t be closing apps frequently as that can be counter productive, there are occasions when you may want to close all apps running in the background if you’re running out of battery life.

You can always close the apps running in the background one (or three) at time, but if it can be quite time consuming. Sicarius, a jailbreak tweak makes it very easy to close all apps running in the background at once.

Step 1: Jailbreak iOS 8 – iOS 8.1.1 on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch

If you haven’t jailbroken your device, then you can follow our step-by-step guide:

➤ How to Jailbreak iOS 8.1.1 using TaiG

How to Jailbreak iOS 8.1 – iOS 8.0 using Pangu

Step 2: Install Sicarius

Sicarius for iOS 8 is available in the following repo http://danyl.net/repo (Note: Do not install Sicarius from the default repo as it is not compatible with iOS 8).

Follow these steps to install Sicarius for iOS 8.

  • Launch Cydia.
  • Tap on the Sources tab.
  • Tap on Edit, then Add.
  • Enter danyl.net/repo in the Cydia/APT URL (after http://).
  • Then tap on the Add Source button.
  • Then tap on Sources tab again, and tap on Dany Lisiansky repo from the list.
  • Tap on All Packages, and tap on Sicarius.
  • Then tap on Install, followed by Confirm.
  • Tap on the Restart SpringBoard button when prompted.

Step 3: How to close all apps with Sicarius

After installing Sicarius it very easy to close all apps.

  • Double press the Home button to access the app switcher or multitasking tray.
  • Swipe up on the Home screen card just the way you would do to close an app. [Note: It is not possible to swipe up on the Home screen card if you haven’t installed Sicarius]

Close all apps in iOS 8

That’s it, it will close all the apps running in the background. You can see it in action below:

There are quite a few tweaks like Purge, Slide2Kill Pro that allow you to close all apps running in the background, but Sicarius is our favorite tweak for this, as it adds cool 3D animations to the app switcher.

Sicarius also allows you to exclude apps, and also music related apps, so that the apps are not closed when you use it. This can be configured via the Settings app (Settings > Sicarius).

Let us know how it goes in the comments.