Double tap the “Home” button to activate the multitasking tray. Tap and hold any of the app icons in the multitasking tray until you see a red minus sign. Tap this to fully close out of an app.

All computers and smartphones benefit from a restart periodically. Your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch are no different. I would recommend doing a hard reset every couple of weeks. It is simple and only takes about 30-60 seconds. Here is how:

1. Navigate to the Home Screen (your first page of apps) and then double tap the “Home Button”. This will bring up the multi-tasking tray at the bottom of the screen revealing all of your recently used apps. Tap and hold on the first app in the list till it starts to shake. A little red minus with a circle around it will appear in the upper left corner of the app. Tap on the red minus for each of the apps and it will disappear from the multitasking tray. Note: be sure you see a little red minus in the corner and not a white “X” with a circle around it. The white X appears when you need to delete an app and not when you are in the multitasking tray. 

2. Once you have tapped the minus on all of the apps in your multitasking tray, tap anywhere on your screen to go back to the normal Home Screen. Then, hold down the “On/Off Button” on the top right corner of the device and the “Home Button”.

Hold the “On/Off” Button and “Home” Button for 15-20 seconds simultaneously to perform a hard reset on your iPhone, iPad (Mini), or iPod Touch.

Keep holding these for about 20 seconds. You will see the “Slide To Power Off” button appear on the screen. Disregard this and continue to hold down the “On/Off” and “Home” buttons until the screen goes black and the Apple Logo appears.

3. Once your device starts up again, you have officially performed a hard reset.

Other potential benefits of the hard reset are improved battery life and less data usage. The reason for this is that occasionally an app on the device will not close out properly due to a bug in the app. This has the potential to continue to use extra battery life and possibly use data in the background. I once had an app download over 300 megabytes of data overnight when I wasn’t even using the app.

Lastly, this Hard Reset can be used if your device has become inactive or has crashed – meaning you can’t open apps and pushing the “Home” or “On/Off” button doesn’t do anything. In this situation, simply hold the “Home” and “On/Off” buttons for 20-30 seconds until the device resets and you see the Apple Logo on the screen.