iEcosystem iPad

Close and exit an unresponsive frozen app on iPad

Usually, when an app freezes and becomes unresponsive, it will crash by itself, and not cause any other problem; depending on the type of app you were using, and on its type of functionality, a crash could mean that you lost some of your data for that app since it was last saved. In some cases, however rare, you may find yourself with a frozen application that won't go back to its normal state, and stay on screen, preventing you from using it or the rest of your iPad. As you'll learn in this tutorial, there are a couple of solutions for that problem, as well as a "brute force" extreme approach, which you'll likely never have to use, but is useful to keep in mind, just in case you ever need it. Since Apple filters all apps that make it to the App Store, you will not find too much bad quality software that cause that kind of problems (or not that often anyway).

How to close unresponsive apps on your iPad

Follow one of these series of steps to regain control of your iPad:

  • If the app freezes and stays on screen, the easiest way to restart the application in question is to return to your iPad Home screen; click on the "Home" button at the bottom of your iPad's case. The majority of the time, this will "force quit" the app, and show your Home screen; from there, just tap again on the app icon, and it will restart, possibly not having saved all your data since last time you used it.
  • In some cases, you may face the problem of an app that is not only unresponsive, but also leaves the physical Home button on your iPad ineffective. When you have that problem, press both the Home button at the bottom of your iPad, and the Sleep button at the top, and hold both of them pressed for 2-3 seconds. (The same shortcut you use to take screenshots on your iPad, except that you don't release the buttons right away).

    Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep button on your iPad
  • You will then see the "Slide to power off" slider redirect button appear on screen: slide it to the right, and this will turn off your iPad, and automatically close and exit the frozen app as well.

This is all you need to do to force quit a frozen application on your iPad; in extreme cases (which we've never encountered), if all fails, just leave your iPad unplugged and let its battery run down all the way, and restart it after that.


iPad Tutorial

Unless noted otherwise, these free iPad tutorials apply to Wi-Fi model and iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models, and updated to cover iOS 4.

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