Kill a frozen / stuck app on my iPhone or iPad?

The Facebook app on my IPhone is frozen and won't do anything! What can I do to fix this problem?

Dave's Answer:

While most of the apps in iOS, whether for the iPhone or iPad, are pretty stable and work every time, some occasionally die and quit or, worse, get "stuck" doing something and end up frozen, seeming forcing you to restart your device to get it to work again.

This is, obviously, a huge drag and if you're in the middle of a game, video or even a chat, the last thing you want to do is have to restart your device and lose everything.

Fortunately, there's a better solution if you're running the latest version of iOS on your device (4.0 or higher): going to the multitasking feature and killing that app, then just restarting it without affecting anything else.

Let me illustrate by using the example you shared of Facebook freezing up...

Here we are in Facebook and things just suddenly.... freeze up.

The trick here is to switch to another app (well, technically you don't really need to because you can also do this once you're at the top window, so you can accomplish it either way). Jump out of Facebook by simply tapping once on the home button below the screen on the face of the iPhone or iPad:

I'll jump into the iPod app because it's easy and convenient:

Now from here, a double-tap on the home button brings up the multitask manager, which shows which apps are running on your phone along the bottom:

As we might expect, the Facebook app is the most recent app running in the background (the iPod app is still technically in the "foreground" on the iOS device, in case you're wondering. it's the reason we had to switch to a different app before we could kill the Facebook app). Good. Tap and hold on the Facebook icon, and after a few seconds...

That's it. Now tap on the red "-" to the top left of the Facebook icon. That'll kill the app and move everything else over one slot:

Now tap once on the Home button to get back to the iPod app, then tap again to get to the home screen. One more tap on Facebook and it'll start up from scratch:

This time it should work fine without any freezes or hiccups.

Note that this technique also works just fine with Apple iPads too...

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Categorized: Apple iPad Help , Facebook Help , iPhone and Cell Phone Help (Article 9791, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: app management, apple ipad, apple iphone 4, facebook, ios 4, task management
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Reader Comments To Date: 42

Ken B said, on February 10, 2011 8:58 AM:

I've seen the list appear when you "double-tap" the home button, but I always thought it was simply a list of most-recent-used apps. Thanks for pointing out the "extra" feature available. (I've had an app lock up, and thought I had to start running other apps until it unloaded the locked one.)

Catherine said, on February 11, 2011 10:20 PM:

This worked perfectly, and it's relatively simple and easy to remember - thank you heaps for that =)

Kim said, on February 14, 2011 6:38 PM:

Ditto what Catherine said. I NEVER would have figured out how to do this on my own. Thank you!!

Kim in Canada

Kelly said, on March 21, 2011 1:49 PM:

Very cool. Worked perfectly and I learned something new. THANK YOU

C. said, on April 27, 2011 11:40 PM:

awesome tip! just got the phone, was waiting years for it to come to verizon and that was the only glitch in the matrix, thanks again

Lisa said, on June 27, 2011 8:49 AM:

That was very helpful! Thank you.

Davinken said, on August 24, 2011 9:13 PM:

Just worked like a charm unblocking the frozen FacBook app on an iPad 2.

Lin Bell said, on November 18, 2011 10:29 AM:

Thank you so much, Dave. I just put my iPad through the steps outlined above, and Bingo -- all fixed.

Debra said, on November 18, 2011 4:27 PM:

thank you for your help!!! An answer on your website helped me with my new ipad2.

Mark said, on December 2, 2011 9:45 AM:

Nice job! Simple, well explained, and the pictures guaranteed that even an idiot like me could follow along. Thanks a bunch.

Christine said, on January 8, 2012 12:34 AM:

Thanks for the tip, Dave. My yahoo app froze and your simple instructions helped solve it. Very helpful!

Tamar said, on January 12, 2012 5:03 AM:

Thank you so much for your help! Your pics helped & problem solved within 1 minute! So grateful

TOM said, on January 19, 2012 11:33 AM:

This information fixed my problem with the photo app sticking on a photo.
Thank you sooooo much, everyone else wanted to be paid, even Apple.
Thanks again,
Tom

Kevin said, on January 21, 2012 10:33 AM:

Thanks for you help! Worked perfectly!

Bamboo said, on January 22, 2012 11:49 PM:

If we tab on "-" and kill the app, how can we tap once more on facebook app?

Denise said, on January 26, 2012 8:13 PM:

I tried it & it didn't work for me! The FB app is still frozen & I can't log out or back in. I can from my computer though.

Mandy said, on February 21, 2012 1:05 PM:

Hey thanks so much. Not usually very good at reading manuals or following tech directions but was driven by need to communicate given am on yacht w just my I phone and had a frozen FB page. All working again:)

chinamommy said, on March 13, 2012 4:32 PM:

thank you SOOOOOOOOOOO much, it worked perfect and i would have NEVER figured that out on my own!!

Jane said, on March 16, 2012 3:45 PM:

Spent over 2 hours to solve this, should have come to this site in the first place, worked straight away..... thank you SO MUCH!

Noel said, on March 19, 2012 10:17 PM:

Not in facebook so can't use your instruction
Guide or six apps frozen they keep downloading singly thenstopping and going on to another without completion
With kindle for instance it was an update now it's frozen and I can't get into my books
The others are either updates or new and are frozen hope you can help Rgds Noel

Margali said, on April 21, 2012 1:22 PM:

Thanks -- that worked perfectly!

Pam said, on May 25, 2012 8:41 AM:

Thank you so much! My Gmail was stuck and I couldn't read anything...what a relief.

Nicholas said, on May 27, 2012 1:45 AM:

Thank you so much, it worked, and now if it happens again, I'll know how to fix it. You're awesome dude.

Shannon Conrad said, on June 3, 2012 7:46 AM:

It worked!! Thank you so much!!

Jackie said, on June 20, 2012 1:56 AM:

Brilliant, it did not work first time so I tried again.... what a relief!
Thanks so much, saves a trip to the Apple Shop!

Ocean said, on June 25, 2012 7:00 AM:

Dave,

I did this but am still stuck in the photo's section on my iphone FB. I can "see all" photos, I can "tag", "like", read comments about that photo etc. but I can't get back to home, there is no home button. I have cleared all apps that were running and rebooted my phone (several times). Any other ideas? Thanks. Ocean

Cory said, on July 4, 2012 9:29 PM:

THANK YOU!

Al said, on August 3, 2012 12:07 PM:

Thanks, man. Works perfectly. Helped me kill off TED just now.

Kaitlynn said, on August 13, 2012 2:29 PM:

Thank you so much for this article! so helpful and worked right away!

laurice said, on August 20, 2012 12:44 PM:

thanks a lot- worked like a charm to unfreeze Safari

Alice said, on August 27, 2012 8:16 AM:

You are a lifesaver for someone who is not computer/iphone savy. Thanks for all the right answers that are easy to follow.

Carol said, on August 27, 2012 10:16 PM:

Thank you thank you thank you! It worked to unfreeze Pages. Your directions were easy to follow and I learned something new!
Thanks again.

freddie kay said, on September 13, 2012 2:14 PM:

thks... easily explained and well it actually worked...buy u a drink one day...

Ben said, on September 24, 2012 12:12 PM:

Thank you for your help! it is easy once you explained step by step!

Nick said, on September 29, 2012 6:09 PM:

This advice is seriously mediocre. I can't find a single place on the internet that deals with the real issue I'm having. How do you kill an app that is frozen while downloading or installing? Apple brilliantly set up these types of app to be un-deletable while downloading. Thus, a frozen/stuck/hanging app can't be deleted after making the apps shaky. The task bar trick from this article works for frozen apps, but not for apps that won't finish downloading.

Dave Taylor said, on September 29, 2012 11:28 PM:

Not sure how it can be mediocre if it's not addressing the situation you're talking about, Nick.:-) What I've found useful in situations where the app is half-downloaded and stalls out is to go to a different wifi network, go into the App Store app, and "update all" again. Seems like it restarts the download. Good luck!

thebanana said, on October 2, 2012 1:21 PM:

Great tip. Thanks. It was making me crazy.

Dawn said, on October 14, 2012 11:54 PM:

AWESOME! Thank you!

Kait said, on November 1, 2012 3:27 AM:

THANK YOU!

Manu said, on December 22, 2012 10:29 PM:

To the point. Fixed my problem in a minute. Thanks.

Ollymac said, on February 7, 2013 6:17 AM:

Thank you so much. I was searching for ages but yours was the only advice that I could actually follow and totally fixed the problem. Thanks again :-)

marianne said, on May 8, 2013 1:37 PM:

thank you this worked perfectly!

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

Kill a frozen / stuck app on my iPhone or iPad?

Reader Comments To Date: 42

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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