How To Quit Apps On the iPhone X, XR, XS and XS Max

Since the iPhone X-series models have no Home button, new users sometimes struggle with how to exit apps and get back to the Home screen. The Home indicator line at the bottom of the screen is the key to doing this. However, it is important to realize that this line is at the bottom of the screen in any orientation. So it won't appear on the right when you are playing a game in horizontal mode, but at the bottom of the screen under the game or sometimes over the graphics at the bottom of the game.



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Closed captioning for this video is available on YouTube: How To Quit Apps On the iPhone X, XR, XS and XS Max.
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. MacMost is brought to you by the more than 300 people that contribute to the MacMost Patreon Campaign. Find out how you can become part of it at macmost.com/patreon.

So when the iPhone X came out it had a very big design change in that there was no Home button. The Home button is the main way that you exit or quit apps. So now we have a lot of iPhones that don't have a Home button. You've got the XS, you've got the XS Max, and you also have the XR which is more reasonably priced. You have tons of people buying the new iPhones that don't have the Home button.

When this first happened with the iPhone X a lot of people were like, well how do you quit apps. Apple explained it and there was a lot of videos that explained how to do it. People were talking about how to do it. But a lot of people who didn't get the iPhone X kind of ignored that and now they're getting the iPhone XR and iPhone XS and are confused about how to Quit.

The way you Quit is there is this white button at the bottom of the screen. It's actually a white line. You have to drag up on it. So you drag your finger up on that white line and if you continue to do that it exits the app. It's not actually quitting. The apps are always running. So it's still running but you're basically exiting it and going back to the home screen. It's the Home indicator is what it's called. You can do it a little easier if you're having trouble with it. Just position your finger below the bottom of the screen and drag up. A little flick and it gets rid of it.

You can also do it slowly and pause and now you're in the Switcher and you can switch between other apps or go back to that existing one.

Now here's where people run into trouble. It seems to work find and they're using it for awhile and then they run into an app that is in horizontal mode. So a game app is a common one that people run into this. So here's one of my games. Now you can see clearly here, because we're talking about it, there's a white bar at the bottom of the screen. But the bottom of the screen is different now. It's horizontal orientation. A lot of times people will still look for the white bar on the same side where it was before. So in other words basically by the lightening port or on the right side of the screen in this case. They don't see it there and they don't notice the home indicator at the bottom.

Sometimes games aren't as clear about this. I made a little space there so you can see the home indicator clearly. But sometimes games are using the entire screen and the white bar almost gets washed out. You use it in the same way but now you're kind of swiping from the side which is now the bottom in horizontal orientation. So you move it up and that's how you dismiss the app that is horizontal.

There are a lot of questions about this at Apple discussion groups. I've gotten some and other places. So I know some people are missing this which is why I'm making this video. Of course once you see it, once you understand that this bar shifts to be at the bottom of the screen no matter what orientation you're holding your iPhone, then you understand where to look for it. But until you make that leap you may miss it and be trying to go from the right side of the screen to exit the app.

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